


Close the Door Lightly When You Go

by RosalindBeatrice



Series: I Still Miss Someone / I Know That I Miss You but I Don't Know Where I Stand [3]
Category: Music RPF, The Beatles
Genre: 1979, Angst, Christmas, Christmas Tree, Fights, Holidays, Insecurity, Jealousy, Linda McCartney - Freeform, M/M, Male Slash, McLennon, New York City, Paul McCartney and Wings, References to the Beatles, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Slash, Tension, The Dakota, Trust Issues, Unresolved Tension, Yoko Ono - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:38:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 42,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5957346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindBeatrice/pseuds/RosalindBeatrice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to I Still Miss Someone and I Know That I Miss You, but I Don't Know Where I Stand. When last we left John and Paul, it was mid-1976 and they seemed to have come to an understanding. Now it's 1979. Paul has received a phone call from Yoko asking him to come to New York to cheer up John. Though it's right before the Christmas holiday, he drops everything to visit, only to find that John does not appear happy to see him. John's POV.</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>Turn around, don't whisper out my name<br/>Like a breeze it would stir a dying flame<br/>I'll miss someone if it eases you to know<br/>And close the door lightly when you go</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Fairport Convention, "Close the Door Lightly When You Go"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided to serialise this one, so nothing about it is yet set in stone except for the current installment(s). This means that I may take my readers' wants, suggestions, and needs into consideration if you leave comments. It's been a few months since I've worked on some fiction, so I'm trying to get back into the swing of it. Cheers, and thanks!

Six days before Christmas, Good for Nothing Lennon found himself alone in the Dakota. Utter Waste of Space Lennon had tried to watch some television, but without Sean underfoot giving his teddy a pram ride or stacking sofa cushions into forts and making a comfortable din, he couldn’t concentrate. Lacking the usual goodbye kiss from Yoko on her way out the door to meet that morning’s board of dictators, Perpetual Disappointment to Everybody Lennon couldn’t get on with his day. So smoking ciggie after ciggie, Perfect Failure Lennon sat in the window and wished he hadn’t been born.

Strangers all across the world were unhappy with his decisions, his family was unhappy with his decisions. No one had been satisfied with his decisions for as long as he could remember.

Case in point: You shouldn't waste your time with that rock 'n' roll. Shouldn't dress like a Ted. Shouldn't squander your education like that. You shouldn't have gotten that tramp pregnant. Shouldn’t have said you were bigger than Jesus. Shouldn't have stopped touring. You shouldn't take so much LSD. Shouldn't have fallen in love with that Jap tart. You shouldn't break up the band. You shouldn't sleep with only me, I'm simply not enough for you. You shouldn't hang around Harry. Shouldn’t get so drunk all the time. You shouldn't have abandoned your son. Shouldn't have stopped making music. You shouldn't have yelled at Sean like that. We're leaving.

He'd tried to write his dread down in the journal he kept on his bedside table, but he felt as though something with an icy hand had reached in and squeezed his guts. It was impossible to concentrate over the cresting panic and fear. He tried to remember the last time he had felt completely free and couldn't.

He stood up and paced. The white walls always seemed exceptionally high during times like this. He bent down to stroke Micha, but she evaded his touch and trotted off in the direction of the kitchen, wanting her afternoon ration of calf’s liver no doubt.

All alone in his ivory tower. Except people in ivory towers were supposed to  _know_ things. The more certain he was of something, suddenly the more wobbly it seemed. Easier to believe that there were guidebooks that could get you through life, patterns you could observe in the numbers, predestination written in the stars. Often he mistrusted Yoko’s psychics, even Charlie and his clever cards. He was so irritated by people who seemed to have it worked out without having to observe cautious rituals. Like Paul, for instance, bouncing through life like a stupid neighbourhood dog, rewarded with pats and the choicest bones wherever he went. John stubbed his cigarette into an ashtray and looked down seven stories to the street below, then up at the sky. Snowflakes were drifting feather-light on the currents of air. He tried to count nine, but there were too many to pick out single ones. Remembering it was already 19 December, he ached for Sean. Sometimes he felt beyond help.

In the other room, the buzzer to the door sounded. His heartbeat picked up. Maybe it was Yoko, feeling out his mood before she would come up with Sean. Had he really been that much of a prick, though?

"Yes?" he said, punching the button. He wasn't in the humour to make witticisms. 

"Visitor for you, Mr Lennon."

There was a time when that might have been enigmatic and therefore enticing, but Paul always arrived in the same way, thinking John's visits were so nameless and numerous that the designation "visitor" would go unrecognised. Strangely enough, he felt a wash of relief at this. There was something to be said for a familiar face when you were feeling desolate and out of sorts, even if Paul did get under his skin half the time.

A minute later, Paul was standing inside the door looking perfectly absurd, wrapped in too many layers and weighted down by bags and parcels and luggage, his face half-swallowed by a muffler.  

“Looking shabby there, Father Christmas,” said John.

“It’s nice to see you too,” Paul said. “Take some of these?” Without waiting for a yes, he dumped some boxes in John’s arms. They were damp with snow.

John set them on the table in the entryway. “Shoes,” he said. Paul had already started to make his way toward the sitting room.

“Don’t act so happy to see me,” Paul said, sliding them off and pushing them next to the neat line of Sean’s and Yoko’s against the wall. He wiggled out of his anorak and handed it to John.

“I thought you were on tour,” John said, curiosity getting the best of him.

“We are,” said Paul, unwinding his muffler and draping it on top of the coat. “We’ve got the next ten days off.”  
  
“And you just decided to spend them in New York?” John said, hoping that his voice sounded as dry as he wanted it to. The curiosity was really stabbing him now.

“Something like that, yeah,” said Paul. “Yoko and Sean about?”

“No.”

Paul looked surprised.

“They’re out,” John said and, since turnabout was fair play, “What about the rest of the McEastmans?”

“At home,” said Paul, just as unhelpfully.

“Tea?” said John. Nothing solved a stalemate like tea.

“Would you?” said Paul. “I can’t believe how bloody cold it is here. It feels like minus twenty. A wonder you haven’t frozen your arse off.” He gestured at John, who hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt or socks when he’d gotten out of bed.

“At least I’m wearing trousers today.” He glanced Paul up and down, thought he detected a blush in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the cold. As usual when he came to visit, Paul had a guitar strapped to his back. But the suitcases were new. “What’re those?” he said, cocking his head. “This isn’t a hotel, you know.”

Bold as fucking brass, Paul walked past him. “Yoko told me to bring my things,” he said, setting them next to the sofa.

“Yoko told you to—what?” Setting Paul’s things on the table next to the parcels, John followed him into the sitting room.

“She told I was coming, didn’t she?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“No, she didn’t bloody tell me you were coming!” said John, forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to be interested. “What is this?”

Cool as ever, Paul said, “Well, it looks like a visit.”

“What did she tell you?” John said. There was that cold, tight sensation in his middle again.

“Tea?” Paul said, sitting on the sofa.

“I want to know what the hell she told you, man,” said John. He could tell his voice was hard now and while he hated that Paul always seemed to catch him when he was in a bad mood, he hated the thought that the two of them had been colluding behind his back more.

“Hey wait a minute now, she didn’t tell me anything.” Paul looked taken aback. “She told me you could use some company, but Christ. I’m telling you, I didn’t fly eight hours here straight after a show so you could yell at me to fuck off. So can it with the bad humour.”

“It’s my fucking flat,” John said. Paul couldn’t push him around that easy.

“Yeah? It’s my fucking holiday and I’m not about to spend it with a murderous crosspatch. You’re as bad as one of the kids. Just, let’s have the tea, alright?” Paul pushed out his jaw, daring him to say anything.

They stared at one another.

At last, John laughed. Paul could be a tenacious bastard when he wanted to be. “Christ, and you’re as bad as Sean when he wants ice cream for supper! I’ll get you some bloody tea.”

“Thank you,” said Paul, crossing his legs and reaching for that morning’s  _Times_.

John filled the kettle with water from the tap. Yoko preferred distilled, but today he felt compelled to make it the way he did in the old days, he and Paul practising for hours on end every afternoon at Forthlin Road while his dad was at work, trading fags and gulping tea, occasionally scanning for Elvis or Little Richard on the wireless. As he set the kettle to boil, the cats wound around his ankles, crying for a tidbit.

“$675 for an ice-cream maker?” Paul said, looking up from the paper when John returned. “You Americans are mad. I suspect you’ll be ordering one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said John, sitting on the arm of the sofa next to him and peering at the paper.

“Never mind,” Paul said, folding it back up and setting it aside. “Slow news day.” He looked up at John.

John met his eyes. He still wasn’t accustomed to thinking of a man in the same way he’d been thinking of women for twenty-five years, yet the same anticipatory sensation appeared in his throat when he locked eyes with Paul. It was a kind of electricity. The gaze lasted two seconds too long. Paul smiled and John had to look away. 

You could get swallowed in Paul's eyes if you weren't careful.

He cleared his throat. “So you just decided to stop off in New York? Bit out of the way, isn’t it?” Not that he followed Wings Over the Goddamn Solar System  _that_  closely, but the American papers hadn’t been fellating them lately so he assumed they’d been playing in England.

“Well, I didn’t just decide, your wife phoned me about it,” said Paul. “Which my wife was not happy about, I’ll have you know,” he added, wagging a finger at John. “It being Crimble and all.”

“So you flew here …?”   
  
“6:45 in the morning after playing Glasgow and getting three hours of sleep. And sitting on the jet for eight hours.”

“Come off it, I’m sure you had a nice kip on the way over.” Paul had always liked to dramatise things a little bit.

“Yeah, not the same as your own warm bed, though!” said Paul. “I was looking forward to having some long lie-ins over the holiday, you know.” His voice was insistent, but playful.

“Right, and I suppose you can achieve that with half a dozen mini-McCartneys stampeding ‘round the house,” said John, tossing him a smirk.

Paul yawned, as if envisioning it. “You get used to it.”

They were still no nearer to the question of why Paul was here. Yoko was a force to be reckoned with, sure, but she’d never had any particular sway over Paul. Quite the opposite. It made him more than a touch suspicious and, irrational though it was, jealous. Perhaps she’d finally had enough of Shit for Brains Lennon and Mr Happy-Go-Lucky in the flesh was beginning to look good. The cheerier Paul was, the more hateful he wanted to be. Just to spite ‘em.

As if to prove his point, Charo hopped up onto the couch and began giving Paul the business, tail held high and paws flexing. Paul bent over her, speaking soft words, and she butted him with her forehead. Christ, even the cats liked Paul better.

“What did Yoko tell you?” John said. “‘Cos she didn’t tell me, whatever it is.”

“You know how she is,” Paul said, stroking Charo. “Not much. She told me you’d been a bit down lately and needed some company. I, uh—” His hand stilled.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, you didn’t sound in such bad shape to me. It didn’t sound that urgent. I asked why she couldn’t call on any of your New York mates, you know. I mean, there I am getting ready to go on stage and it’s a week ‘til Christmas. Not the most convenient time. Linda wasn’t happy with me.”

“Thanks,” said John, folding his arms.

Paul clucked. “You asked,” he said. “Any road, Yoko said it was me you needed. No question, only ol’ Paul would do. She’s hard arguing with when she’s got her mind made up. Figured it must’ve been important.”  
  
“Wonder what she meant by that,” he said.

“What do you think?” Paul said. Charo chirped at him and he resumed stroking her. “You’re the one who’s down in the dumps here.”

“How do I look to you?”

Paul looked him down, then up. He considered. “Well,” he said, “you’ve not taken my advice about having a bit more to eat, but no better or worse than usual.”

John snorted. “Please, the flattery will go to me head.”

Paul shrugged. “Anyhow, I’m here now.”

“Are you happy to be?” John said. He couldn’t resist asking what was on his mind.

Paul looked into his eyes and gave him a partial smile. “Yeah, guess I am. You’d better make good use of me while I’m here.”

“And how long is that?”

“I’ve got to be back by the 22nd or the kids’ll never forgive me. I’ve promised them a tree no later than then.”

John prickled a little, hearing that. Paul had always been enviably good with children. Julian had never said it out loud, but John could always tell that he wished Paul was his dad. The effortless way Paul would get down on his hand and knees so three-year-old Jules could mount his back and command the clumsy Paul horsie over the carpet. How he’d sling Julian atop his shoulders and give him a faster, teeth-rattling version of the horse, or whirl him around full speed until they were both dizzy and screaming with laughter. John couldn’t crack him the way Paul could. In many ways Julian had always felt like a stranger, moulded to Cynthia’s conception of what a boy ought to be, a Powell and not a Lennon. At any rate, how did you talk to a kid? What did you do with ‘em? They were so full of daft ideas, so brimming with energy and noise when you least wanted it. Sean he’d had to learn from scratch and that’s when it clicked, but most times he doubted he was any good at being a father.

“What’s happening this afternoon, anyway?” Paul said.  
  
“You’re looking at it,” said John.

From the kitchen the kettle was rising to a shriek, which gave John an excuse to excuse himself.

He’d seen Paul only twice since the spring of 1976, once after Wings had played New York and once when Paul had brought baby James over to meet them. Paul, in an embarrassed English sort of way, was quiet on the subject of their changed relationship, although he didn’t—John noted—object when John had pulled him into a side room and locked the door while Linda and Yoko and the kids visited in the sitting room.

Of course John hadn’t really expected Paul to drop everything for him. Not really.

Though he knew and it stung him that once upon a time, not too many years ago, Paul probably would have.

Still. What he had expected was to see the bastard more than twice in three bloody years. Somehow, he could never bring himself to broach the topic when Paul rang from Scotland or London or wherever he was farting around at the time. He didn’t want to grovel, to scrape for the crumbs of Paul’s attention, which was clearly focused on far more important things than Imperial Twat of the Year Lennon. God knew he was busy enough himself bringing up baby and plane-hopping from country to country trying to straighten out his cosmic shit.

He poured the steaming water into twin white cups and fished some tea bags out of the cupboard. Usually the whiteness of the Dakota was clean, calming, but some days he longed for the smirchy disorganisation of a faraway life in Liverpool. Some days he longed to muddy it over. There wasn’t a day he didn’t wish for something different. Same as it ever was. He pulled the milk out of the refrigerator and tucked it under an arm, kicked the door shut and grabbed the cups.

He laid it down on the coffee table in front of Paul and took a seat beside him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's funny, I conceived this story after hearing my mother and sister kvetch about "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime" last Christmas. It's their least favourite Christmas song, whereas when I hear it I feel warm and childlike and Christmas-y inside. 
> 
> Anyway, I also thought John and Paul would get along better in this story, but as I'm writing it John is just not cooperating with that. Sorry! I go where they take me.
> 
> Also, the chapters were seeming a bit short so I've combined them into two. I'm attempting to make the next one longer.

Paul wasn’t bothered about the lack of a proper milk pitcher, let his tea steep and doused it with the unwieldy jug after a few minutes had passed. They made the smallest of small talk; the subject coming back to the kids for some irritating reason, and he didn’t want to think about kids right now because Julian was still on his mind. Julian—and Sean looking up at him with tears swimming in his big black eyes. Then again, though, perhaps that was preferable to talking about music, one of numerous elephants currently skulking about the room. There were far too many of those pachyderms when Paul was around: the Beatles elephant, the Paul’s-blinding-musical-success elephant, the neon green zebra-striped polka-dot elephant that was their sexual relationship. John’s eyes skimmed to the TV, on mute behind Paul.

The Christmas advertisements that Sean watched with such keenness were playing, Rolex watches and fizzy drinks and instant cameras and happy families buying it all up with big stupid smiles. In a few hours gaudy Christmas specials would air, featuring washed-up stars and big-band nothings, the women in glittering gowns and the men in suits already looking sorry and dated. Someday it’d be Paul on those daft shows, making grandfatherly jokes with Dean Martin as Linda conducted a chorus of their twenty-seven angelic children. Inside he smirked. Not for Lennon.

“Something the matter?” Paul said, noticing that he’d lost John’s attention.

Funny that for as often as he thought of Paul, longed for him even, he couldn’t set aside the past and just get on with it when Paul came ‘round. He’d come to accept a long time ago that he resented Paul as much as he loved him. While they were as much mates as they’d been in 1963 in most of his daydreams, could crank out a tune or have a roll in the hay without exchanging one word, as soon as Paul was on his doorstep, all the shit from the last ten years came coursing into his head, a filthy tide of ill feelings, jealousy, and hurt. He couldn’t imagine why Yoko thought Paul was what he needed right now. What he wanted was to spend Christmas with his fucking family, not grit his teeth through three days of Merry Motherfucking McCartney. The good feelings that he seized him when he’d invited Paul in not an hour ago were already gone. Whoosh. Bye-bye, fuckin’ birdie.

“Never better,” said John. Paul knew him too well to fall for it, though. John could see Paul studying him, deciding whether to press it. “You hungry?” he said, before Paul had a chance to respond.

“Starving.”

“Let’s have a bite, then. Lemme get me things on,” he said, rising from the sofa. He wasn’t feeling the least bit peckish, but reckoned a change in environment might clear his head.

In the privacy of his bedroom, he stripped off his pyjama trousers and buttoned himself into a pair of dirty blue jeans and a shirt that had definitely not, he noticed, been so loose when he’d purchased it the previous winter. He heard Paul’s voice in his head, scolding him for dropping weight. Leave Yoko to drag him into all this! God, what was he meant to do with him for the next 72 hours? How many more hours of awkward conversation would he have to endure, suffering in silence as Paul chattered about his latest triumphs. It would be so much simpler to open the window and slip down the fire escape, hail a cab and camp out somewhere, Charlie’s flat perhaps, until both Paul and his troubles disappeared.

Paul was humming in the other room. Da-DUM, da-DUM, da-da-da-da-da-dum. Da-DUM, da-DUM, da-da-da-da-da-dum. He followed it by singing along to the beat he’d just put down, some corny old love standard. As much as John was tempted to march him into the corridor and lock the door, a quiet part of him knew it wasn’t Paul’s fault he was in this foul humour. Poor old punter, still thinking they could start over. John had half-believed it himself after Paul had first visited the spring of ’76. He’d believed it the second time he’d seen Paul, and the third. Six months went by after Paul’s last vist. Then a year. Paul stayed missing. “Working,” he called it. And watching Sean get taller, watching the loaves rise on the sideboard, he wondered what he was waiting around for. Some people were too busy filling the world with silly love songs.

Tucking a pack of fags into his breast pocket, he went out to face the Muzak. “Alright?” he said to Paul who had, like a little mother, taken the dishes and the milk into the kitchen in his absence. 

“What’s good?” said Paul, walking to the entryway. He picked up his muffler and began winding it around his neck.

“Anything’s fine by me,” he said. He pinched a ciggie from the pack and slotted it in his mouth. “What do you want?”

“I want waffles,” said Paul, shrugging himself into his coat. “With whipped cream and sprinkles and a big fucking cherry on top. And you’re paying.” He grinned.

John shook his head, deciding not to take the bait. “Got a light?”

“Yeah, hang on.” Paul fished around in his coat pockets and finally came up with a book of matches. He held a flame out to John, who leaned forward and tilted his ciggie in. Paul’s eyes held his for just a moment longer than John would have liked. They were bleary and red. Beneath them, Paul’s cheeks were dark with stubble.

“Let’s go,” he said, stepping away before his brain could have any further thoughts about Paul’s face.

They were quiet as they took the private lift down to the lobby, quiet as they stepped outside into the streets together. The snow and the bitter, whipping wind sucked his breath away.

“Christ, you didn’t mention it was this bad!” he shouted to Paul, who was lagging some steps behind. He tried to calculate what the temperature was in American degrees. Twenty, maybe? They didn’t make cold like this in England. It never ceased being a shock.

“I tried to warn you.” Paul appeared at his shoulder, scanning the streets. He was wearing a knit hat as well as the muffler, and only his eyes were visible.

John lifted an arm. No sense in calling for the limo in this weather. Paul’s shoulder brushed his and stayed there. For a second, he flashed back to 1964: Paul always just behind him, clapping a hand on his shoulder and it giving it a chummy squeeze as they waved like royalty to the throngs. Keeping him steady. He wanted to move away, but it would hurt Paul’s feelings.

To his relief, a taxi slid to a stop in front of them just a few moments later. Paul climbed in and John followed him, stamping the snow off his shoes once he was seated. He directed the cabbie to the Upper West Side; he knew a hole-in-the-wall diner there where they wouldn’t be bothered. The radio, he noted with gratitude, was loud enough to provide a buffer between him and Paul, not loud enough that he couldn’t hear him, but loud enough that he could pretend to be listening to it. It was one of Elton John’s singles playing, “Mama Can’t Buy You Love” or something. Not one of his best, too much of that disco crap. He wasn’t unhappy to hear it end as they pulled onto Columbus Avenue—until the farty keyboard strains of Paul’s latest hit started up.

He groaned and Paul looked over. “What?” said Paul.

“This,” he said. “What were you thinking, man?”

“What do you mean?” said Paul, sounding affronted.

Obnoxious jingling bells joined the keyboards. He wasn’t so much of a shut-in that he hadn’t heard the stupid fucking thing every bloody place he went these days. He paused for a moment.

 _Simply having a wonderful Christmastime_! went Radio Paul.  _Simply having a wonderful Christmastime_!

“Well it’s simply terrible, isn’t it?”

“Oh, bugger off,” Paul said, snapping. “Can’t you say just one nice thing once and awhile?”

The cabbie drove on, oblivious to the argument. “I just think you can do a lot better. This is Mickey Mouse shit you’re putting out.”

Paul snorted. “That’s fucking rich, you know, coming from you. What have you done the past five years? What makes you think—?”

“Just shut the fuck up, Paul, alright? I didn’t want you here.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Paul and John have it out.
> 
> Comments, please! It's hard to keep chugging along without feedback.

“Right, well, brilliant because I don’t want to be here, either. You can tell Yoko to find you another punching bag. When I get out, we’re splitting.”

They sat out the rest of the ride in silence. John itched to strike—if not Paul—then something proper solid, even as deep down he knew this one had been his fault. It never failed to stun him, the speed at which his tongue got him in trouble. Just another defect he had no control over.

When the taxi pulled up to the kerb, Paul wasted no time in jumping out. He slammed the door behind him so hard the car shuddered. John shoved three dollars at the cabbie and wrenched his own door open, stepping into a slushy puddle. He cursed. If it hadn’t been for Paul, he’d be warm in the Dakota right now, not elbowing his way through a gang of Christmas-shopping cunts with a wet foot in this shitty weather. By the time he got to the pavement, Paul had vanished into the crowd. Fucking tosser.

His anger refocused on Yoko. She’d caused all this. She knew damn well he hadn't been pleased with Paul these past few months. It was almost as if she wanted him to be in perpetual state of wrath. He also knew that it was quite unlikely she'd returned to the Dakota in the fifteen minutes since he'd departed, but that didn't stop him marching into a telephone box and dialing their number in a rage. To his surprise, someone picked up after a couple rings.

"Hello?" he said.

“Hello?” said a male voice on the other line.

Fred. Probably dropping off the things John had asked him to pick up at the grocer's.

“Yoko in?” he said, struggling to keep his voice steady.

“No, I don’t think so. Haven't seen her if she is. Want me to take a message?”

Whatever was left of John's earlier good spirit deserted him, made its way out into the street and was squashed dead in the traffic. “No,” he managed. “And I want you to clear out. If anyone else is there, tell ‘em to fuck off too. I don’t want anyone about today or tomorrow. Or until I tell you. Got it?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Could I—?”

Should Never Have Been Born Lennon hung up on him, wanting to bash the telephone box to pieces. He stood there for a minute, perhaps two, feeling jagged, lost, and raw. He considered his options. What he longed to do was climb back inside the warmth of a cab and return to the Dakota, and lie in bed until the very sun went dark. But stupid Paul had left his stupid things in the stupid foyer. There was no avoiding him before he left. A small part of him did feel a bit bad he’d insulted Paul. The larger part insisted that Paul needed to hear it from someone. Paul was capable of much better, he didn’t have to end up singing “Wonderful Christmastime” next to Dean Martin in fifteen years’ time.

He had a ciggie up against the brick of a pawnbroker’s, his wet foot growing colder by the minute, and tried to meditate some of his anger away.

When he walked into the diner, Paul was sitting toward the back at a Formica table, scribbling on a piece of paper. John took the seat across from him, though he’d rather have walked into a snake’s den.

“Hey, Paul ...” he said.

Paul, scratching out words, didn't look up.

“I wasn't expecting company.” He didn’t expect any of his excuses to actually work, but he had to offer something. “Me tongue got the best of me. Can we just forget it?”

“No,” Paul said, scratching. His eyes remained fixed on the paper.

“So, what? Are you gonna leave or what?”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “That's the long and short of it, I reckon. You can let me back into the flat or give me your key so I can get my stuff.”

“Paul,” said John.

“I'm done with it,” Paul said, looking up at last. “D-O-N-E, done. You treat me like absolute shite every time I'm in town. It’s not going to happen anymore.”

John studied him, trying to make up his mind on a scale of one to ten how serious Paul was.

"I mean it," he said. "I can read what's going through your head. D-O-N-E _done_ , mate."

Better make it at least an eight. "I said I’m sorry."

"Sorry," Paul said, folding the piece of paper in half, "won’t work on me anymore. I’m tired of this.”

“We always work it out,” John said, hoping that would placate him.

“No thanks to you.”

“If I’d have known you were going to act like this …” he said, his own irritation beginning to double back on him.

“You’d have been nicer?” Paul said. “Wouldn’t that have worked better from the start?”

“You know I’m not—that’s not me,” said John. He couldn’t be anything other than what he was. Surely Paul could see that by now.

“You could at least try to pretend,” said Paul. He tucked his piece of paper into the pocket of his anorak, which hung on the back of his chair. “It’s been a whole bloody year since I’ve seen you. It’d be nice if you could go an hour without slagging me off.”

John fidgeted. If the last thing he’d wanted was to have Paul show up on today of all days, then the second-last thing he wanted was to be having a couple’s conversation in the middle of a crowded restaurant. He thrust a hand in his coat and felt around for his ciggies. There was no sense in telling Paul that it did him good to be slagged off once and awhile. He lit another fag.

“It’s not fair on me, you getting angry at me just because you’re sitting around on your arse,” Paul said.

Cheap-shot Paul. He wouldn’t get to John that easy. “Not everyone needs a million things doing to make ‘em happy, Macca,” he said, taking a drag.

“Hah! So that’s it. You’re punishing me because I’ve got the band and you haven’t. You’d feel better if I was some worthless boozer singing “Love Me Do” for a couple quid on a Saturday night.”

“Aren’t you?” John said. There were more than enough potshots to go around, if that was the way Paul wanted to play.  

Paul laughed, short and merciless. “No, I’ve got it right, haven’t I?” He seemed excited, like Sean when he’d solved one of his Japanese sliding-block puzzles. “You want to do music again and you’re mad I’m still having a go at it. You can't bear to see me doing something that makes me happy.”

A middle-aged waitress interrupted them, carrying a tray, and a good thing because John was considering driving his fork into Paul’s arm after that last remark.

“Here we go,” she said as she surrounded Paul with plates of food, insensible to their row. “Anything else, hon?”

“Nah. This is grand,” said Paul. “Cheers.”

She turned to John. “Can I get you anything?”

Paul’s head on a saucer, John the Baptist style, sounded nice. “Nothing for me,” he said, feeling a little less clenched once she’d departed.

In the meantime, Paul was drizzling syrup on a stack of waffles the size of the Empire State Building. He looked at John in a defiant sort of way as he sawed into them and took a bite. “My feeling,” he said after a moment, cutting a second bite, “is that you’re still upset that I moved on.”

“And my feeling is that you’re a cunt for always showing up when no one wants you around.”

“Piss off, yeah?” Paul said, around a mouthful of waffle. “We’ve been through all that already, it wasn’t my idea to come here. Go on and be a bastard, you’re not putting me off my grub. Go home. I’ll meet you there once I’m finished.”

“Play it however you want, Paul, I don't give a shit,” said John. “It's never going to be like it was before, so why the hell bother?” He wanted to hurt Paul, to lacerate him with words before he went packing.

“Maybe that’d be fucking different if you let anyone but Yoko get close to you.”

“Here we go again with that, eh?” John said. “Do you and I have a piece of paper from the registrar’s office?”

“Don’t we?” said Paul, taking another big obscene bite of waffles. John wished he’d stop eating like a swine without a care in the world. “We’ve got more legal crap tying us together than you and her do. Anyway, marriage is work. God, it’s hard bloody work. And you learn to make it work, that’s the way of it. If it’s worth having, it’s worth working at. To my mind, you don’t want to work at it.”

“Or I don’t know how,” John said, feeling like his skin was turned outside-in as soon as he said it.

Paul scoffed. “Yeah?” he said. He leaned forward, muffler dangling into the sticky mess of half-eaten food. “So fucking learn.”

His words reminded John of something Yoko had said earlier, before she had walked out the door with two suitcases, her handbag, and their crying child. The idea of returning to the Dakota now, with the spectre of Paul in addition to everyone else who was haunting him with their disappointment, seemed suddenly unbearable.

“It’s hard to when you’re always on the other side of the goddamn world,” John said. He’d be so cheesed off at Paul not thirty seconds ago and now he almost couldn’t stand to see him leave. He needed his head checked, clearly. To make himself feel better, he decided not to tell Paul that his muffler was covered in syrup.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for temporarily abandoning this, readers. It was on my mind, but I had deadlines on more formal (less fun) publications the past three months.
> 
> As always, comment if you enjoy and spur me on to get the next bit out fast. :)

“You bite my head off half the time I ring,” Paul said. “I never know if I’m going to get a nice hello or World War III.”

Perhaps Paul was right about that bit, but he knew fuck-all about what it was like being stuck at home all week. There was a kid with a million different needs, an army of assistants to order around, and a wife who said no when he tried to seduce her because she’d been at the office fourteen hours, not to mention all his faults and failures—and they were so very large in number—to reflect on. When he got half a moment’s peace, he’d sit down with last week’s shitty parboiled demos, only to waste half an afternoon wondering whether he’d ever be any good at writing songs again and if anyone would ever value him for anything but a band that had ceased to exist almost ten years ago.

“When I do come ‘round,” Paul said, continuing, “you suspend your dislike just long enough for us to shag, then it’s back to more of the same.”

“I wouldn’t call it shagging,” said John, surprised that Paul would bring that up.

“Don’t be daft. You don’t have to put it in somebody’s arse for it to be a shag,” Paul said, cheeks reddening.

“Have you thought about that?” said John, curious.

“No! I have  _not_. We’re not talking about this right now. That’s not—it’s not happening anymore, okay?” The color of Paul’s cheeks deepened. “Done doesn’t mean ‘I’ll think about it.’ It means that this is it. I’m sick of being treated this way. I don’t need it right now, you haven’t the first clue about what’s going on in my life. It’s not all sunshine and roses, it’s not as bloody easy as you think it is.”

John wanted to laugh at that, trying to imagine what could possibly be bad about Paul’s charmed life, but sensed it would be a dangerous error. “What? One of your heirloom cows jump the fence while you were playing Wembley?” he said.

Paul was on too much of a soapbox to heed the insult. “The problem with you is you’re always down my throat for something I didn’t do. If you don’t want to talk about it, fine,” he said. “That’s fine. I can live with that. But don’t take it out on me anymore, I’m not having it.”

“Well, what if we tried starting over?” John said. Simpler than the alternative.

Paul laughed at him. “That’s a good one”—pointing with his fork—“If you keep acting this way and I keep believing that it’ll all get better someday, who’s the fool, really?”

“I’m dead serious. I never met you, you never met me, the band doesn’t exist. Complete strangers, you see?”

“Rubbish,” Paul said. But John thought he could detect a ripple of interest in his expression.

“Suppose I’m a—” He cast about. “Struggling guitarist supported by me filthy rich wife. You’re some toff who’s here on business. You stop off at a shop to look for Christmas goodies for the wife and kiddies and we bump into each other.”

“John, that won’t work,” said Paul. He laid his knife and fork crosswise on his empty plate.

“Why not? If the Beatles don’t exist, we’ll get on perfectly fine,” said John. He was beginning to fancy the idea.  

Paul made a face, looking put-upon. “The bad stuff doesn’t just go away when you snap your fingers. You’ve got to …” He turned, distracted by the waitress who had crept up on him.

“That was fast,” she said, bending to retrieve his empty plate. “Anything else for you, hun? More coffee?”

Paul forced a smile. “Just the bill, please.” When they were free of her, he said, “How many more second chances am I expected to give you?”

When Paul was at his fingertips, John didn’t want him. When he removed himself from John’s reach, John desired him more than anything. It wasn’t a sexual thing or a romantic one, he just wanted his presence. Made him touched in the head, beyond a doubt. “What’s one more?” he said. “I’ll do better this time.”

Paul rolled his eyes to the heavens, mouth dropping open in mock incredulity. He shook his head. “Blimey, couldn’t you just say that from the start?”

John stared at him, baffled. “That’s not done though, is it?” he said.

“You’re unbelievable,” said Paul, still shaking his head.

“I don’t want to be a fucking queer about it, alright?” he said. “Must I be all Alfred Lord Tennyson when we quarrel?”

“So don’t be a queer, you giant knob-end,” Paul said. “Treat me like a fucking human being. I don’t want us to pretend it’s the old days, I know that’s done with, but I don’t want to behave as though it never existed either. All I want is not to be treated like I’m the last person on earth you’d care to see. Fair?”

“There’s syrup all over your fuckin’ muffler,” John said.

“Fucking hell.” Paul looped the garment over his head and held it at arm’s length. “You bastard.”

The waitress returned with the bill and John laid down a ten-dollar bill while Paul dunked a corner of a serviette in water and scrubbed at his muffler with it.

“Let’s get out of here,” John said, an urge upon him to be out of the stuffy diner and into the streets where the air was clearer and fat waitresses couldn't trap him with stacks of American pancakes.

“To where?” said Paul, still seated as John rose.

“I don’t know, does it matter?” he said, itching to go.

Paul looked sceptical, a slight tilt of his eyebrow. “What’s your rush?”

“What’s the point sticking around?” The longer he stood, the more conspicuous he felt. People would be lining up soon enough for their Famous Beatle autograph. Always happened if he lingered in one spot long enough.

“This muffler for one,” said Paul, handing it to John as he got to his feet. “I’d like not to have syrup on my neck if it’s all the same to you.” He slipped on his anorak and began buttoning.

“I’ll get you a new one. Let’s be off, c’mon.”

Paul gave him a whatever-you-say look and tugged on his cap. John dropped the syrupy muffler into the middle of the table and led Paul back into the street. The snow and the wind hadn’t gotten any better, felt worse in fact. Paul looked up and snowflakes caught in his eyebrows, melting against the warmth of his forehead within seconds. The sight gave John a sensation that beggared description.

 _When I see you darling, it’s like we both are falling in love again_.

The lyrics appeared in his head to the tune of one of the demos, “Don’t Be Crazy,” he’d been grappling with the past few weeks. His stomach went wobbly. Paul didn’t smooth things out, he complicated them tenfold.

Paul exhaled, a breath of air that turned into fog in front of his lips. “Cold,” he said, and turned to John. “Where to?”

Finding out how to spend the next thirty minutes would itself be a challenge. He tried not to imagine three more days. “Let’s walk. We’ll find something to do.”

Paul went ahead of him on the pavement, sidestepping other miserable New Yorkers bundled in bulging jackets or long coats. The glass windows of the shops were dressed in Christmas lights, blinking a faint green, red, and blue in the cloudy afternoon. Too cold to be out here much longer. He was thinking about suggesting a pint when Paul stopped ahead of him. “How ‘bout here?” he said, cocking his head.

John looked into the window of a bakery with baguettes stacked like cords of wood in its window. The warm, yeasty smell that wafted onto the street when a patron opened the door was a bit of heaven. He shrugged at Paul and followed him inside. Some old songster was crooning “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on a tinny-sounding radio in the kitchen. John hung back as Paul moved along the pastry cases, eyes scanning.

“Help you?” said a round lady with a Polish accent, appearing behind the counter wiping her hands on a checkered towel.

“Have you got any Christmas puddings?” said Paul.

“They don’t have pud in America, Paul,” John said, half under his breath.

“Christmas what?” said the lady.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t true. Yoko always managed to track one down, but whether she had it imported or bought it off a shop, he didn’t know. She left him feeling so helpless sometimes.

“Christmas pudding,” Paul continued. “It’s, ah.” He made a shape with his hands. “Fruit, spice, nutmeg, you know? The whole bit.”

The Polish lady shook her head. “We have fruitcake,” she said, gesturing to a long, biscuit-colored log beyond the glass. It was studded with bright green and red gumdrops, like an alien spaceship.

Paul looked back at John, pleading. John shook his head and tightened his lips. “She doesn’t know what you’re on about, mate.”

“Right, thanks,” said Paul to the lady. “Cheers.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said, looking bemused as they walked back into the street.

“They don’t have pudding here,” John said, as they resumed their aimless walking. “Yoko finds one each Christmas, but I don’t know where she gets it.”

“Will she be there?” Paul said. “When we get back to yours.” His shoulder bumped John’s.

John looked at him, wondering what he suspected. “No,” he said, after a few moments. “Not tonight, I reckon.”

Again, he saw a question on Paul’s lips, but all Paul said was, “Ah.”

He had to get away from Paul’s shoulder, his unspoken questions. He stepped off of the kerb, avoiding a woman with parcels. He intended to walk around her and cross in front of Paul, but as he stepped into the street, a horn bawled in his ear from nowhere and he sprang back to Paul’s side, heart thumping.

“Watch it, you asshole!”

Some bloke in a big red boat of a car had slid too fast into a parking spot where John had temporarily stood. He hung out the window, looking red and furious.

“Watch it yourself, asshole!” said John, wishing he had something to throw at the fellow. His heart galloped in his throat. Fooking madman, driving so fast in weather like this. He moved toward the centre of the pavement and tried to catch his cool. When he searched for Paul’s eyes, he found he was being watched with a frown. “You see that?” he said, incredulous. “Un-fucking-believable, man.”

“You say arsehole like them now.”

The remark was so impertinent, so beside the point, it caught John off-guard. “Huh?” he said, as they moved forward, leaving the angry driver well behind.

“You say arsehole like an American. Aaaaaaaashole.” Paul drew out the A like a lifelong Brooklynite.

“Yeah, and so what?” John said, cocking an eyebrow at him and curling his lip just a bit. “Never mind that your mate just almost became roadkill. Your concern is appreciated.”

Paul shrugged, turning into the wind and wincing as it hit his face.

“No, you don’t get to do that,” John said, trotting a little to keep up with him. “What’s that all about, not a moment’s thought for me nearly getting splattered on the pavement back there?”

They’d had this argument before. Paul had hung up on him a couple years ago, having called him Kojak and told him to fuck himself. John hadn't forgotten it; it was pretty inventive coming from Paul, to be honest. If not for Paul and Mimi nagging him, he wouldn't have noticed the so-called Americanisms. They were a fright, both of them. For the first half of his life, his Scouse had been the sticking point and now they were on him for cleaning it up. Christ.

“You're not coming back, are you?” said Paul.

“Huh?” John said again. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Paul fell into step with him. “Back home, you’re not coming back home. It’s America for keeps, is it?”

“What are you saying such stupid bloody things for?” said John. He was aware of almost spluttering. “At least give me the opportunity, I’ve only had me bloody green card three years. I’m still not convinced they're gonna let me back in if I escape.”

“Rubbish,” said Paul. “You've been off to Japan and other places plenty of times. You’re always halfway around the world when I ring.”

“Oh, now look who's talking!”

Paul brushed him off. “No, it’s something else, some other reason you’re staying away.” He scuffed his foot in a powdery snow drift.

“This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,” John said, before he was conscious of what he was saying.

“What?”

“Nothing, I'm talking bollocks. I don't know why I said that. Why’s it matter now, anyway, me being away? I’m here, you’re here, and I’ve promised not to row with you. You’re making it very hard on me.”

“Because I don't think you mean to come back.”

He didn’t know why Paul gave such a toss.

“That isn't true,” he said, and for a change he meant it. “I'm not keen to go back, sure. It’s not going anywhere, so what’s the hurry? I like it here in New York. We aren’t freaks here, you know? We’re just another Japano-Irish-English-American family. People let us alone here. It’s not ‘Do this, do that, conform, conform, conform’ until you’ve made yourself sick.” He shivered, cold. “Mimi misses me, yeah, but I'm in no rush to get back to her, let me tell you. To hear her knocking Yoko and every decision I've made the past thirty years, you know? We're happy here." He underscored that last bit with his voice. “What I don’t get is why you keep coming here and looking for the John that used to be. You grow up, you get married, things change. He’s gone and I’m here. And I’ll have to do, okay?”

Something about the answer Paul’s eyes made him stop in his tracks. He couldn't read the emotion in them. Disappointment? Coldness? Paul was such a fucking enigma to him sometimes. He could stay away for a year and take his band all over the bloody world and here he was getting all twitchy about what John did with his life. Control junkie. Always did have to have things his way.

“I can't wait around for you," he said, not entirely certain why he was saying it, “forever. Tick-tick-tick. Time marches on. I’ve got to live me own life.”

Paul looked as though he wanted to argue, but seemed to think better of it. “I know,” he said, quiet. “It’s just strange sometimes when I remember you’re on the other side of the ocean. I’m there and you're here.” He paused, as if tasting his own words.

John wondered if he were thinking about the old days, hopping on the bus to Mendips or driving his Mini over to Kenwood so they could huddle in the attic with guitars in their laps and giggle over a joint.

“Aye, well. You’re never really there, are you? It’s always Australia or California or Wings over Algeria.”

“It’s not going to be like that forever.”

John laughed. “You’ll be on that stage when you’re seventy-four and your teeth have rotted out,” he said. “And you’re fat with no hair.”

“You’re vile,” Paul said, mouth twitching.

John had a sudden impulse to kiss him on the cheek, but beyond the fact they were in the midst of hundreds of Christmas shoppers, he didn’t know the rules with Paul anymore. He was—what? Mate, rival, boyhood chum, fly-by-night lover. Interacting with one of those he could do, but four at once was a sliding-block puzzle with ten thousand pieces. Perhaps that's why he never rang as often as Paul might have liked. They lurched between affable conversation and halting, tongue-tied awkwardness. Paul was never around long enough for them to seek out some sort of rhythm. Every time they saw one another, they had to start over again.

“Here,” said Paul. He’d stopped in front of a corner chemist, the kind that sold you medicines and junk food. John didn’t dare call it a pharm-uh-cee, lest he offend Paul’s delicate British sensibilities.

“Forget something in your kit?” he said.

“Come on,” said Paul, cheeks pink with the cold. The argument had been abandoned just like that. He had some trick up his sleeve.

John trailed him into the store. This one wasn’t playing Christmas songs on the overhead radio, but “Sweet Caroline,” a classic piece of treacly shite if he’d ever heard one. Paul wandered down an aisle, seeming to know where he was going to. John flexed his fingers, wishing he’d thought to wear gloves. The warmth of the shop was a relief, if nothing else. Paul led him to the holiday aisle, stuffed with blow-mold snowmen and Father Christmases, artificial holly, and ribbons of all sizes and shapes. John got an uneasy feeling in his stomach. Paul picked up a box of lights, appraising them.

“Take ‘em,” he said, passing them over to John.

“Why?” said John, gripping the box.

Paul didn’t answer, but stacked five more in his arms.

“What are these for?”

Paul moved down a metre, now examining glittering Christmas baubles of all colours. He whistled.

The tune was “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”

“Paul, I don’t want to play Christmas with you.” The funny feeling in his stomach was dread.

Paul whistled, a smile playing about his lips.

“C’mon,” said John.

Paul merely passed him three boxes of baubles and a package of tinsel that the cats would doubtless be vomiting up for weeks to come.

“Have they got scarves here?”

“I don’t have a tree, you know,” he said, balancing the lights and tinsel on top of the baubles.

“I know,” said Paul. “Where would they keep their scarves?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am again, and without months between chapters against all expectations! Do comment and leave kudos if you enjoy the story. It motivates me to keep plugging away.

Powerless, Spare Prick Lennon followed Paul into another aisle, bound by his promise to bite his tongue. God, bugger, and fuck, this was more than slightly torturous. To begin with, he’d almost met his end under the tyres of some maniac’s car, then Paul gave him a drubbing for the way he spoke, and now he was expected to participate in Paul’s mad Christmas charade. He stood by as Paul examined a boring selection of Made in China mufflers and Neil Diamond droned on sickeningly about how good times never seemed so good, strings and horns rising in an unendurable crescendo. He glanced over at other patrons, nervous at being recognised—and with his old pal Paulie no less. He hadn't been stopped once today. That was about ten persons below his average public outing.

“They all go with your eyes,” he said, exasperated, as Paul fingered a navy blue muffler.

“Har har,” said Paul in a sarcastic way, not paying him the least bit of mind.

The Diamond song, in all its bombastic, overwrought glory, faded, a relief. If he couldn’t persuade Paul out of whatever scheme he meant to hatch, he could mortify him into speeding it up. That had never failed to work in the old days.

The next song in rotation opened in a strummy, Dylanesque way and he recognised it as Janis Joplin. Poor old Jan. She’d mailed him a birthday tape in October of ’70, a sweet little song to commemorate his thirtieth year here on earth, and by the time he opened it, she was dead. He listened to it once and then deliberately lost it in storage. Gave him the creeps, that she could be there and then gone just like that.

He began singing along, drowning out Paul's cheerful humming. "I was feeling near as faded as my jeans," he said, moving closer to Paul so that he had access to his ear. Loud enough to be overheard by somebody other than Paul, he said, " _Bobby found a dental dam, just before it rained. He wore it all the way to New Orleans_..."

Paul burst out laughing. "Bugger off," he said.

" _I was playing soft while Bobby sang the blues_ ," he said, running short on dirty substitutions. "Windshield wipers slapping time ..." He crept behind Paul until he was practically breathing down his neck. The tinsel slid to the floor. " _Nothin'! Means nothin' honey if it ain't free_!"

"Stop it," Paul said, laughing. "You’re making a spectacle, you git."

" _From the Kin-tucky coal mines_ ," he said, playing up the American accent.

"Stop." But John noticed he'd stopped worrying about scarves. They were beginning to attract glances. He tried to screech and wail like Janis, soft, his chin grazing Paul’s shoulder. That made Paul flush. "Alright, you've made your point," Paul said, removing a red scarf and piling it on his boxes. "Just shhhh, okay?"

" _I'd trade all of my tomorrows_ ," said John, lowering his voice, " _for one single yesterday. To be holding Bobby's body next to mine_."

Paul smirked. "Bobby, is it? That your knob-jockey?"

John stopped singing. It sounded like the jealous snipe of a lover, though Paul didn't look jealous. He had that expression John recalled so well from the Beatles days, the somewhat tickled, somewhat panicked oh-please-don't-do-that-in-public one. There was a time in his life where John had lived for that look and the attention it brought. He didn't remember if he'd quite connected the dots in his own head yet about Paul at that time, simply that he enjoyed the way that Paul fussed over him, once and while administering a severe dressing-down than made him feel warm and wanted in an inexplicable way.

“Are you John Lennon?” someone said, and Paul winked, turning around and walking in the opposite direction.

God, bugger, and fuck indeed. “Yeah,” he said. No point in trying to conceal it. A young woman with brown hair had appeared at his shoulder. “Got a pen?”

She produced one and he scrawled his name on a Metro receipt she dug out of her handbag with shaking hands. The starstruck ones were a bit easier to cope with, as seeing him in the flesh tied their tongues and he could typically extricate himself without much bother. This girl, poor thing, could only manage a flurry of thanks-yous as he handed her back her pen and receipt.

            “Happy Christmas,” he said, feeling charitable. “Cheers.”

            He set off to find Paul, leaving her shivering like jelly next to the hats and mittens as Janis carried the song into its climax over funky keyboards and a dancing piano. Paul was in the checkout lane paying for his things. John passed the Christmas baubles over. “Not paying for these,” he said.

            “Where’s the tinsel?” Paul said.

            “Forget it, it’ll make the cats sick,” said John. He focused on Paul, not wanting to make eye contact with the woman at the till lest he be handing out autographs for the rest of the afternoon.

            “You’re a fright,” said Paul, as they left the chemist.

            “My pleasure,” he said, groping about in his coat for his ciggies.

They rounded a corner onto West 82nd Street, the shops fading out and the brownstones fading in. The snow was deepening with the hour, getting caught in the cuffs of his shoes and melting into his socks as he trudged through it. Already the sky was dimming, rendering everything in shades of grey save for the ever-blinking Christmas lights in the city’s windows. His stomach turned at the thought of Sean, looking forward to Christmas somewhere without his dad.

            “Want a light?” said Paul.

            “Yeah,” John said, nodding. He’d absently put a ciggie in his mouth and almost forgotten it.

            Paul lit a match and they both put out a hand to shelter it from the wind. John’s fingers grazed the top of Paul’s wrist and Paul looked up at him. “Alright?” he said.

            “Yes,” he said, lying as Paul shook the flame from the match and dropped it into the snow. “Put your muffler on.”

            Paul pulled the scarf out of the brown paper sack and handed the latter to John as he arranged the scarf about his neck. Without knowing why he did it, John reached out and tugged the edges.

            “Doesn’t go with your eyes,” he said.

            “It’ll go with your nose after I’ve bloodied it,” Paul said, taking his bag back. He grinned, the winning smile that had gotten him everything he wanted since he was at least fifteen years of age. “What’s Sean want for Christmas this year?”

            John’s stomach churned again. Here they were with the kids again. Hoping he sounded natural, he said, “An Atari 400. I’m not sure what the hell it is to be honest, a typewriter pinball gadget or something. Costs a fortune. What about the little McEastmans?”

            “The girls are all horses this year. Never mind that they’ve got real ones to ride whenever we’re home, they’ve got to have a herd of plastic ones, too. Can’t look the same either. They have to have every color and pattern. The ones they haven’t got, they’ve memorised. And Heather …” He whistled. “She’s turning  _seventeen_  a couple days after Christmas. I’ve gotten her some photography stuff, a lens that Linda helped me pick out, she’s doing the photographer bit just like her mum, but ...” He whistled again. “Do you remember what we were doing at seventeen? My skin crawls when I think about it. The first time she brought her boyfriend home, I could hardly stop myself strangling him. He really is a nice fellow, but that’s my little girl, you know? Linda’s better about it than I am, but she wouldn’t be if she knew how I was back then!”

            “Boozin’ and whorin’,” John said. “Couldn’t keep it in your pants.” He tried to imagine Sean as anything other than a smiling, bright-eyed little boy and couldn’t. He had Yoko’s temperament in that way. He wasn’t as restless or reckless as John had been even at four years of age.

            “Exactly,” Paul said, eyes still wide for effect. “I can’t think about it too much or I’d lock her in a cupboard ‘til she’s forty. She wanted to wear a miniskirt one night when he came to pick her up. I told her the skirt had to be past her knees or I’d have her grounded until 1986. She wasn’t happy about that. Linda says I’m a bit hard on her, but I can’t help it.”

            John half-smiled. He did remember what Paul was like at seventeen and here he was, a fusty old dad.

            “She thinks you’re cute,” said Paul.

            “Come again?” said John.

            “You, Heather. She thinks you’re cute,” he said, adding, “Don’t get any ideas.”

            “Perish the thought,” said John. There was nothing less sexy than being the fantasy of a gawky teenager, especially one of Paul and Linda’s parenting.

            The street lamps winked on, one by one. The snow seemed to be abating. The branches of the naked black trees were tufted in it; the cars and the railings of the brownstone front steps heaped. Occasionally, a cab passed by, but otherwise the streets were nearly empty. Not quite rush hour. He wondered how much longer Paul wanted to be out here, what awaited them when they returned to the Dakota.      

            “Ah,” said Paul. “Ah-hah!”

            Up ahead, two rows of Christmas trees leaned against the side of a building, one on either side of a shop door. John’s dread flared again. Paul never forgot an idea once it was in that intolerable head of his. He pictured them trimming the tree back at the Dakota, all smiles and joy, singing rounds of “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime.” He was glad he hadn’t had anything to eat at the diner because the very thought made him want to be sick.

            “Hullo,” said cheery Paul, cheerily, to the tree-seller.

            John hung back.

            “Oy, come here,” said Paul. “Which one do you fancy?”

            “Not a one of them,” said John, keeping his distance.

            “They’re all lovely,” Paul assured the tree-seller.

            “It’s got to fit in the boot of a taxi,” John said, hoping that would deter Paul.

            “Rubbish, they’re all too big. We can put it on the top,” said Paul, rotating a tree to check for bare patches.

            John groaned, watching Paul move amongst the trees and inspect each one. This was meant to be Sean and him rushing out last-minute to find the perfect tree. It was meant to be them imploring Yoko to find out which of their apartments the Christmas stuff was stashed in and helping her retrieve it so they could make the typical male hash of decorating. It was meant to be them having hot cocoa at the table after the tree was decked, most of the baubles clustered on two or three branches at the bottom by Sean.

Paul was making a meal of finding the right tree, even stopping to take a long drag of his cigarette, pop out a round puff of smoke, and admire himself vanquishing it with a single outward breath.

            “Do you think this one is losing too many needles?” he said.            

            Swallowing down his vow not to be cross with Paul, John moved slightly closer. “It’s fine,” he said.   

“As if,” said Paul, making it clear by the tone of his voice that he knew John was putting him on.            

“How about this one?” John said, reaching out to touch the scrubbiest tree in his sightline, a lopsided one with a litter of needles at its base.

“That’s a Charlie Brown tree, mate.”

“Nah, it’s a champ,” said John, noticing that it was also crooked, decidedly so.

“It’s dry as a bloody tinderbox,” Paul protested.

“We’ll take it,” John said to the tree-seller, slipping his hand in his jeans pocket and feeling about for a note. He withdrew a five-dollar bill and handed it over. “You got one of those stand thingy-ma-bobs?”

Paul groaned, but quiet so the seller couldn’t hear it.

“Rubbish, that,” John said, waiting at Paul’s side as the seller sawed a few inches off the bottom of the tree in a wasted attempt to straighten it.

“I know,” Paul said, sounding peeved.

“No, the Charlie Brown Christmas programme. I sat down and watched it with Sean a fortnight ago. It’s utter garbage. The plot’s rubbish and they try to convert you to Jesus at the end.”

 “I tried to make the girls watch  _The Two Ronnies_  when they were little,” Paul said. “They hated it. They like the stop-animation stuff, the Rudolf and the Frosty the Snowman films.”

The seller commenced screwing a stand into the bottom of the tree and finished by wrapping it in netting. Paul shook his head sadly. “He has much nicer trees than this, you know.” John simply beamed at him, close-lipped. Paul couldn’t resist and laughed. “You’re a rotter, Lennon.”

They stood at the kerb with their tree, watching for a taxi, and when it came they helped the driver tie the sorry, shedding tree to the top. In the backseat of a taxi again, Paul let his knee sag against John’s. The driver had the radio on low, a song by the Commodores that John didn’t remember the name of. It was sentimental and dull as dishwater and Paul therefore probably loved it. That was another thing Sean wanted—a Commodore PET. John, who had pictured a soft toy, was baffled when Sean showed him a magazine advert for yet another expensive gadget looking like it was straight from  _2001: A Space Odyssey_. Yoko encouraged Sean’s inquisitiveness and love for gadgetry and John indulged him, if only because Sean’s other love in life was music. He was still baffled by it, though. When he was four years old, his hobbies were racing tin cars on his mum’s windowsill and lobbing sticks at people.

He had to admit that it was nice now that the atmosphere in the taxi wasn’t all poison and daggers. It might have been 1965 and they might have been on their way to a press conference or the airport or any of the other countless places chauffeured cars would take them. Paul was at once less pretty and more pretty than he’d been back then. Less pretty because the creases in the corners of his eyes were now permanent, dragging down the lower lids of his eyes, and so were the lines on his forehead. John also strongly suspected he’d begun dyeing his hair. More pretty because, well, it was Paul and he was here and that was good. Possibly. For the moment.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who was it that said "murder your darlings?" 
> 
> Anyway, they may not have meant it like this, but this chapter spun out of control and wrote itself before I was even aware of what was going on. It wasn't the direction I intended to go _at all_. I thought I knew where the story was going, but perhaps I don't. 
> 
> As always, do leave feedback if you enjoy it. It's our bread-and-butter.

He leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes, feeling drained. Hadn’t slept well the night before. He’d let himself into Yoko’s work studio to toil over a song, bringing along his favourite acoustic and a tape recorder, but of course it hadn’t gone any place. He’d ended up stretched out on the floor talking into the recorder, doodling horrible little creatures on a small pad of paper from Yoko’s desk, and loathing himself to the very pit of his being. Couldn’t write music worth a damn, couldn’t draw worth a damn, couldn’t carry on relationships like a normal man. He was vile, ugly, worthless, aging, angry, washed-up. The Decline and Fall of the Lennon Empire.

When he’d come to bed well after 3 a.m., Yoko had rolled away from his embrace. When he reached for her in the morning, her place in the bed was already empty.

He opened his eyes, expecting to see Paul studying him and worrying over him, but Paul was resting his eyes, too. He tried to imagine what Paul had meant by saying his own life wasn’t all bloody roses and sunshine, but couldn’t puzzle it out. Paul was the man with everything, a smile on his lips and a song in his heart. Perfect looks, perfect manners, perfect band, perfect wife, perfect kids. The charmed life of Paul McCharmley.

In his heart, he knew that was simplifying it a bit—Paul had, after all, lost his own mum even before he did—but at least he'd had one parent left to love him unconditionally and keep him steady, a parent who was proud of him and didn’t despise all his choices in life like Mimi, a parent who didn’t show up only because he was down on his luck and needed money like Freddie, maygodresthisfoolishsoul. And maybe Paul and Linda had their differences sometimes, but that was a helluva sight better than constantly being kept at arm’s length by your businessman wife because there were cows to sell and contracts to sign and men in suits to meet and astrologists to consult every bleeding hour of every bleeding day of every bleeding week. At least Linda stuck by Paul’s side. He knew she did—she was always up there on stage with him or stepping off a jet with him or holding his hand in photographs, the personification of love and loyalty.

Paul just couldn't see the gulf that had opened between them. His feet were planted on the same land they’d always been, but John’s earth had withered into desert and floated out to sea, a lonely little island with no inhabitants. He might have been able to swim like a trout in real life, but he didn’t know the first thing about paddling through the ocean that now separated him from Paul. Paul was no use because he was blind to the entire predicament. He thought his old friend was still standing right by his side, perhaps not close enough to touch, but close enough to hear him. And John wasn’t. Not anymore.

A gagging sort of snore broke into his thoughts and he looked over at Paul again. His jaw had tipped toward his chest and his mouth was hanging open. Asleep. For a moment, he looked piteously human.

The melody to “Don’t Be Crazy” started up in his head again. He wondered if he and Paul would have gotten on if they’d met like this instead, two strangers in New York with their respective fortieth years barreling down on them like Metro trains. He wondered whether they’d have anything in common, though he dismissed the thought immediately. Paul and John without Elvis, skiffle, and guitars was so unlikely, he couldn’t trick his brain into accepting it. He wasn’t so bitter that he couldn’t admit that it would be nice to get on with Paul like he used to, no thinking required. Putting effort into a relationship that used to function without it seemed like such a  _chore_ , though. If there was chemistry, fab: mates. If there wasn’t, what did you do but chuck the person? Still, Paul’s words about marriage being work intruded on his thoughts.

“Hey,” he said, knocking his knee against Paul’s.

“Hmm?” Paul said, opening his eyes and looking confused.

“We’re here,” he said. The Dakota was framed against the fading blue-grey of twilight. Its triangle gables and sandstone sides made it look like a big gingerbread house in the snow, particularly with the gumdrop-coloured lights that glowed in some of his neighbours’ windows. Paul yawned.

Together, they stumbled through the snow and got the tree inside the doors of the building, Paul at the base and John at the top. From there, they wedged it into the service lift, carpeting the floor in needles in the process. John pitied the person who stepped in after them with wet shoes, getting needles stuck to their feet and tracking them all over their flat. The cold of the New York afternoon had sunk into his bones and he thought longingly of stretching out in a warm bath and reading for hours. Fred had picked up Lauren Bacall’s book for him a few days ago and while he generally found actors a bore, there was something tantalising in getting the chance to peer into the life of a downstairs neighbour who mostly kept to herself. Though the old bag was his mum’s age, he wondered if she went into details about Bogie. He imagined her bending over him, hair coiffed and shimmering in that old-film star way, waist impossibly small, pursing her lips and blowing. The lift rattled as it reached his floor.

Bloody hell. Getting a stiffy over a woman old enough to be in a care home. He fucking was touched in the head. He shifted, uncomfortable about his present physical condition.

Oblivious, Paul reached for his end of the tree and whistled a tuneless whistle. "Ready?" he said.

Paul could stand a lesson or two about whistling, and not in a sexual way, either. Maybe John would introduce him to Bacall later. He grabbed the top of the tree, needles digging into his skin, and led Paul down the corridor. When he opened the door, he half-expected Sean to come flying out of nowhere with a cry of "Daddy!", but the apartment was well dark now and the only noise was the cats at his feet, deprived of their usual afternoon snack and wailing their displeasure. His head ached. Once they'd managed to pull the tree inside, he kicked the front door close, feeling savage. Paul coughed there in the dark and John could tell he was nervous.

“The glamourous life of Joon Looby. This is it, son,” he said to the dark form that was Paul.

“Who said I’m complaining?” said Paul.

“No one, but I know what you’re thinking. Let’s get this put up.” He and Paul backed the tree into the sitting room and with a small amount of cursing, were able to set it upright in the corner without squashing one of the cats. “Alright, alright, you bastards, come get it,” he said, leading the cats away from the tree. “They’ve got to have their dinner now or we’ll be listening to this the rest of the evening.”

“And tea?” Paul called after him.

John sighed. “And tea.”

He put the kettle on and dished out the cats’ liver, prepared the day before by Uda-san, into three porcelain bowls. By the time they were finished and he’d eaten a quick bowl of shredded wheat cereal, the kettle was hissing and steaming again. He poured the water into black mugs this time instead of white, dropped in the teabags, and took them out to Paul, who had removed the netting and was standing in front of the tree with a frown. The barest spot on the tree was turned tastefully to the wall and he’d made a neat heap of needles next to the stand.

“Cheers,” he said, when John passed him a mug. “Needs a tree skirt.”

John shook his head. “That’s Yoko’s territory. I don’t know where she’s stored the Christmas stuff. Probably in the basement.”

“What about a black bin bag? Got one of those?”

John shrugged. “Somewhere.” He’d just as soon toss the tree out the window into the street below, for all the cheer it brought to the place.

Paul moved to the sofa and sat down, blowing on his cup. John took the white armchair next to him.

“You're depressed, aren’t you?” said Paul.

“Huh?” Christ, this shit again. 

“When I was here a few years ago, you were—you’d just had Sean. That I could understand. But now you’re …” Paul trailed off, frowning.

John frowned back. They had unspoken rules about this, the feelings talk. It wasn’t acknowledged. They might have nudged each other in the old days as a way of saying “Hey, perk up," but most of the time they merely set a guitar in their laps and coaxed the other out of his bad mood with a few chords. But they did not—they did  _not_ —discuss feelings. Paul had no right to know, anyway. They weren’t cheek-to-jowl like they’d been in the early days, nothing entitled him to know what was going on in John’s head. It was his fucked-up, festering mind thankyouverymuch.

“None of your business, is it now?” he said finally. 

Paul gave him a warning look, turning the mug in his hands. “Seeing as I’ve been called here against my will, you know, I’d say it is.”

“What would you do if I told you I was?” John said. “Not a bit you can do to fix it.”

“I’d ask you why,” Paul said, looking earnest in a way that was both comforting and annoying. “Lend an ear and that.”

“Look, you’re not me shrink, Paul,” he said. “I don’t need you to psychoanalyse me.”

Paul’s expression darkened. He looked as though he would have liked to throw his mug of tea at John’s head. “I don’t want to, you daft jerk. I just want to help. It’s why your wife asked me here.”

“No one appointed her Sigmund fuckin’ Freud, either,” John said.

“You’re bloody impossible,” Paul said, taking a murderous swallow of tea.

"Oh? What was all that rubbish about no rowing?” John said, shoulders tensing.

“You agreed not to row with me. I didn’t make any such promise,” said Paul. He sipped. “All I want is to know what’s eating you, you know.”

“The world,” said John. He swiped a match and held it to a cigarette. The resulting drag made him feel a pinch calmer, but not much.

“Come on,” said Paul, raising his mug to his lips.

“And everyone in it.”

Paul rolled his eyes heavenward again. “You are,” he said, “worse than my two-year-old. Why do you think it’s going to kill you to talk to me?”

He looked so smug sitting there, secure in his ability to solve whatever problem came to him. Secure in his role as the saviour. John sneered. “You might wear the pants in Wings, but not everyone has to answer to you.”

“If you didn’t insist on acting like such a fucking child when I drop by, perhaps we could be on the same level. Yeah?”

John waved a hand. “Don’t give me your patronising bullshit! You don’t know the first thing about me life and you don’t know what I’m feeling. We’re not mates any longer, okay? We’re middle-aged blokes who were in a band once upon a time. That’s all.” He sucked hard at the cigarette, trying to force calm to come to him.

Paul set down the mug of tea on the glass of the coffee table, somehow managing not to make a sound whilst doing so. He rose, fists clenched. “You want me to knock you,” he said, shadows framing his face. “You want me to knock your fucking head in so you can throw me out and get high and not have to think about me or any of your problems."

John stayed where he was, heart quickening, realising how close he was to goading Paul into doing just that. That he wanted Paul to do just that.

“I’d love to do it,” Paul said. He stepped closer. “I’m tired, I’ve got jet lag. I didn’t want to come here in the first place because I knew you couldn't keep it together, and I’m sick of being treated like shite by you. I’m sick of ringing when you won’t give me the time of day, I’m sick of you not being straight with me.” And like that, quick as a cat, he sprang forward and grabbed John by the arms, leaning in. John was aware, through the pounding of his own heart in his ears, that Paul was actually tipping him backward in the armchair. His fingers had dug into John’s biceps so hard, it was painful. He wanted very badly to fight back, but a voyeuristic curiosity had a grip on him. He wanted to see where Paul was taking this, how far he could be pushed. The thought of dashing their relationship against the rocks before Christmas, smashing it into small, impossible, bloody pieces, never to be pasted back together again, excited him.

“You think,” said Paul, breathing hard, “you think you’re Mr Inscrutable. You think I can’t see what’s going on.” His fingers dug harder and John found that the pain was welcome, agreeable even. He willed Paul to hit him. “You’ve got this idea that I’ve gone soft and I’m living in the past. You’re dead wrong. I know exactly what you are.” He lessened his hold a bit and the chair’s front legs made contact with the carpet again.

“You’re a petty and jealous and bitter excuse of a man. You wanted to see me lose it all after the Beatles. Nothing would have made you happier. You simply can’t bear it that I bounced back.”

“Is that all?” John said, but the boldness had gone out of his voice.

“No, it isn’t,” said Paul, pushing his face into John’s. Their noses were nearly touching, but far from being suggestive, the moment was starting to verge on frightening. He’d never gotten Paul this worked up, ever. He didn’t know it was possible. “I want to know why you’re in such a foul mood," said Paul. "I want you to be straight with me about it. No more bullshit, John. I want to know what crime I'm guilty of and why I deserve this much hate. I mind my own business. I phone. I’m friendly. I send birthday cards. You’re the one who got rid of me, not the other way around, remember?" There were tears standing in Paul's eyes now. "You’re the one who kissed me.  _You_  opened that door, not me. I could have gone the rest of my life without that. I want to fucking know why."

His fingers began to loosen and John took the opportunity to fling Paul backwards with all his strength. Fuck it all, Paul was right. He wanted to hide. He wanted Paul to skulk back to a hotel room and feel like some animal had eaten his heart raw. For the rest of his stupid life. Paul toppled to the floor, catching himself with his right arm a second before the back of his head hit the floor. John jumped up to finish the fight but Paul was faster. He surged forward and knocked John off his feet. John’s head really did whack the floor, and he saw lights sparkling in his vision. Pain seared up from the base of his skull, white-hot. When he’d gathered his wits, Paul’s knees were grinding into his thighs and his hands had pinned John's wrists. 

“You can’t run from this forever,” Paul said, holding him down. Furious tears rolled down his cheeks. He didn't look like he was crying so much as boiling over.

“I can do as I like.” He’d intended to spit the words, but they came out as a laughable wheeze. His head throbbed.

“You’re pathetic,” Paul said, the tears still coming steady.

John had nothing to say to that, so he didn’t. His veins were sizzling with adrenaline, but Paul held him firm when he wriggled. “How long do you intend to do this?” he said, stilling.

“Until you tell me why you treat me this way,” Paul said.

“One of us will have to have a wee, eventually,” John said.

The tepid wisecrack did nothing to soften Paul. His face was a marble mask save for the tears. John’s thighs, gouged by Paul’s bony knees, were beginning to catch up to his smarting head and his body was coalescing into one sharp ache.

“I don’t want to hate you like you hate me,” Paul said, “but I can learn if you keep on it much longer."

Not a Friend in this World Lennon sagged under Paul’s uncomfortable weight. “You’ve done nothing, I’m just a bastard,” he said.

“Not good enough,” said Paul, clutching his wrists tighter. “My conscience is clear, thank you. I want to know what you think I’ve done. What crime am I guilty of?"

John growled, squirming. Paul increased the pressure. “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” John said, more for the benefit of putting the surreal situation into words than chastening Paul. His mind was turning somersaults. He didn’t know what answer Paul wanted.

As if reading his thoughts, Paul said. “I’m not asking for excuses, I just want the truth. Then I’ll leave."

John looked Paul right in his eyes, weepy, pouchy, and dragged with lines. 

“I don’t hate you," he said, defeated.

“Bullsh—”

“I hate me.” 

Paul looked back at him. A silence lighted. 

“And I don’t like anything—anyone”—he corrected himself—“who reminds me that am a fucking perfect failure in everything I've tried doing since the band broke up.”

Paul stared at him, as if not daring to believe.

“I’m being straight,” he said, exasperated. “Get off of me. Please.”

“No,” said Paul. His tears had stopped.

“For Christ's sakes, Paul, why?”

“I want the whole of it,” he said. “You owe me that, before I go.”

“You’ll be sitting here past New Year, then. That is the whole of it.”

When the weight of Paul’s body vanished, after all of that struggle, it didn't register for several seconds. He was stunned Paul had listened, quick as that. He sat up after a few moments and looked about, but Paul had gone. His wrists were sore as though he’d been given a Chinese burn and he touched the back of his head to find it was tender, goose-egged good and proper. “Paul?” he said. He managed to stagger to his feet and walk, woozy, toward the entryway. 

Paul was standing there, the bags he'd brought into the sitting room already retrieved. He was buttoning his coat and would not meet John's eyes. “That’s all I needed to hear," said Paul.

John, quiet, massaged a wrist.

Paul wound his new red muffler around his throat. Once, twice, three times. “I can’t help you, it’s done. That’s what you wanted all along, eh? Well you’ve done it.”

John’s stomach did a funny turn, like someone had scooped the bottom out of it. He began to tremble. 

Paul gave him an indifferent glance. “For someone who fancies primal scream, you’ve sure got a lot pent-up, haven’t you?” He shook his head, pitying. 

John opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He couldn't seem to stop shaking. 

"What's the matter?" said Paul, voice hard and unsympathetic. 

Gorge rose in his throat, sudden.  "Gonna be sick," he said, and forced his wobbling legs to dash in the direction of the toilet. He threw himself on the floor, knocking over one of Yoko's Art Nouveau bronzes, and was violently sick into the bowl. He clung to the cool, sweating porcelain as he brought up the shredded wheat and the remnants of whatever he'd had for breakfast. For several minutes, he couldn't focus on anything except how ill he was. His body wouldn't quit shaking. When at length he reached for the toilet lever, he wondered whether he'd be better off dead than trying to find a way out of this, the craggiest of rock bottoms.

He was light-headed when he stood. Despite the taste in his mouth, he didn't have the strength to bother with mouth rinse, and so he stumbled out of the toilet and back into the sitting room.

Paul, fully wrapped in anorak and scarf, was in the armchair. He gestured at the sofa. When John collapsed on it, he handed him the cold mug of tea. John was able to get a swallow down and presently his stomach felt a bit less lopsided.

Paul cleared his throat. "Where do we go now?" he said.

John shook his head. He didn't trust his voice. 

"I thought maybe ..." Paul looked away from him. "I'd like to stay, if I could. I'm dead beat. I could use a kip before I go. You won't mind if I use the guest room? I'll clear out in the morning, before you're up. I just need a few hours." 

Aching, shaking, feeling numb, John didn't care. "Second door on your right," he said. His teeth chattered.

"I know," said Paul. Then he was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These men are breaking my heart. I hope I'm doing the complexity of their falling-out justice. 
> 
> Comments, please! Even if it's to say "That's a rubbish line" or "John would never apologise." They make me eager to keep going.

John woke the next morning far later than usual. As soon as he opened his eyes, dread descended on him like a cold, clammy fog. He’d only felt this awful four times in his life. First, when Uncle George died without warning on a Sunday in June. Second, when his mum was killed. Third, when Stuart dropped dead just like Uncle George. Four, when Yoko kicked him out.

The first thing he did after sliding out of his warm blankets and into the cold emptiness of his bedroom was peer into Sean’s room. The bed was undisturbed, the blankets pulled taut with corners neatly tucked. It gave him a lump in his throat. The second thing he did was set the percolator on the hob. The third thing he did was debate over how to do it. Did he use a razorblade? (He wasn’t sure if there were any about, and moreover he didn’t care for the sight of blood.) Did he plummet to his death below from the sitting room window? (Was it fair on a pedestrian or motorist to meet their Christmastime demise via a Very Sad Lennon Missile?) And should he do it before or after his coffee? Oughtn’t he leave a note for Sean and Yoko? (Paul would not be left one.) God, he was too tired to write a word. They’d have to be satisfied with guessing at his motives.

Micha meowed and looked up at him from her place on the tile, eyes appearing yellower than usual against her long black fur. It would be hard to go to a place where there might not be cats. What dreams may come, etc. He ladled out the cats’ breakfast, trying and not succeeding to block out his memory of the night before. After Paul had slipped away, he sat on the sofa for a long, long time. By and by, he’d stopped shaking. At some point, he had gone into the kitchen to fill a watering can so he could water Paul’s sorry tree. Then he’d packed his pipe, the one that Paul had given him, with grass. He smoked the first bowl down to embers and then treated himself to a second, taking drag after drag until all he was capable of doing was collapsing into bed.

No more second chances, no more forgiveness. Yoko was gone, Sean was gone, Paul was gone. They’d gone because he was cracking up. He’d tried to stave it off for so many years, but it had happened at least. So this was it. This was the way John Lennon ended, not with a bang but a whimper. Mad as a box of frogs. Since he’d called all the help off, there was no one to ask him what he needed or talk him out of it. The only living boy in New York. Paul, get your plane right on time now; I know you’ve been eager to fly now. And on that subject, what a consummate piece of shit Simon was …

No snow today, but Central Park was a carpet of white studded with thin black trees. He felt the urge to turn on the television and wipe out his useless thoughts, if only for a half hour. He’d have some coffee and television before he offed himself, make his brain more quick to the task. He shivered. Too cold to go about naked today. He went back into the bedroom and put on a flannel robe and his house slippers. Yes, Paul, a  _robe_. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it. The aching mess of his head and his quivery stomach made him feel like he’d drunk an entire bottle of Scotch the night before. Bruises stippled his upper arms where Paul had clutched him.

Back in the kitchen, the percolator’s steamy inhale-exhale had gotten softer and the water bubbling at the top of the lid was brown. He switched off the hob, poured himself a cup, and stirred in some milk. Taking a tentative sip lest he burn his mouth first thing in the morning, he walked down the corridor to the sitting room.

… nearly dropping the coffee when he got there because Paul was sitting in the windowsill with a guitar, strumming and singing softly to himself.

“Oh, hi,” he said, looking up. Charo was lying at his feet, switching her tail and looking contented.

“I thought you’d gone,” said John, hand tightening on the handle of his mug.

“Woke up with something in my head. Had to get it down before I forgot it, you know,” Paul said. He leaned to scribble on a piece of paper. It sounded like an excuse, but John was grateful no matter what it was, nearly to the point of weeping. Not alone after all.

They both went quiet. For once, John and his Famous Beatle Wit (TM) couldn’t think of a thing to say. Paul was wearing a flannel dressing gown as well, feet bare. His hair was rumpled and sticking up in tufts, suggesting he genuinely may have tumbled out of bed to write a song.

Paul put down his pencil. “Remember that Chaplin song, ‘Smile?’”

“No,” John said, lowering himself to the sofa.

“Smile, though your heart is breaking?”

“Oh that,” said John. “Bit of a sentimental piece of crap, innit?” What an odd thing to bring up. He took a sip of coffee.

Paul shrugged. The shadow of the beard on his cheeks was blueish-black and deep. He turned his head and looked out the window, fingers picking out a nimble melody on the guitar.

John recognised it from somewhere, but the memory was knit over with cobwebs. As the notes went on, though, he began to remember a sequence of hotel rooms in Paris. He and the three others would set up a turntable and alternate flipping the LP that sat atop it, dropping the needle again and again waiting to get tired of the record, but they never did. With each repetition, something brilliant and new revealed itself. They couldn’t get enough. The sound wasn’t a bit like rock ‘n’ roll, but it wasn’t too dissimilar to it, either, the voice and the passion. Next to the lyrics, so much wiser than the young singer’s years, their “yeah yeah yeahs” sounded like the piping of schoolboys.

Paul’s fingers squeaked on the strings with the effort of his playing and he hummed as he looked out the window.

John’s stomach felt a little less knotted. He felt he should say something, perhaps sorry. What he said was, “Go on, sing it then.”

Paul glanced over at him, fingers still going. “What, this?”

“Yeah.”

Paul arched an eyebrow as if to say, After what you’ve put me through? But his humming changed to words.

“ _Ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe, if’n you don’t know by now_ …”

No wonder Paul had chosen this one. John’s throat ached again all at once and he swallowed some coffee before it got worse.

“ _When your rooster crows at the break of dawn, look out your window and I’ll be gone. You’re the reason I’ll be travelling on, but don’t think twice, it’s alright_.”

Paul’s fingers skimmed across the strings.

“ _Ain't no use in turning on your light, babe. The light I never knowed_.”

He coughed and stopped singing. “Can’t remember the rest of the words,” he said, voice almost on the suspicious side of husky. John suspected he did remember, but didn’t press it.

Under any other circumstances, sitting there with Paul would have been cosy. The radiator was ticking in its homey way and warm sunlight was flooding the window where Paul sat. As if overstating the point, Charo yawned and stretched.

The dead feeling in the pit of his stomach was still present, having never really faded since Yoko and Sean left yesterday morning. However, the fight that crackled in him the evening before was snuffed out. If he felt anything now, it was a kind of dull remorse. He had known it for a long time, he supposed, that he—not Paul—was the real enemy. Easier to pin the blame on Paul than to admit he was a headcase who probably belonged in the Sanitarium for Addled Wash-ups. Might as well put _Ice Station Zebra_ on a loop, wear tissues on his cock, and be done with it. He didn’t know how to get back to how he was before, or when and where was-before was located on the continuum of his pointless existence. It had all begun slipping out of his control once they made it to the top. The small calamities, all the abandonments, smothered the successes. Uncle George, his mum, Stu, the bitter end with Paul when the band was breaking up, the bitter end with Yoko when he was cracking up. When he could still write a song worth half a damn, he hadn’t felt so bad, but he couldn’t do even that anymore.

“Sorry about all that last night, by the way,” Paul said, turning back to John. His fingers stopped moving. “Reckon I went a bit overboard.”

John laughed, disbelieving. “ _You’re_ sorry? I’ve had that coming for years.”

“Didn’t hurt you, did I?” said Paul.

John rolled up one sleeve of his robe and rotated his arm so Paul had a good view of the bruises.

Paul whistled. “Hey, sorry about that.”

“No, I was being a complete wankstain. You ought to have given me a proper thumping.”

“I confess it crossed my mind,” said Paul, giving him a small smile.

“Why didn’t you?” said John. He’d seen the fierceness in Paul’s eyes as Paul had held him to the ground. He knew Paul could have beaten him senseless, easy.

“Eh,” said Paul, with a touch of resignation. “Wouldn’t have made you any less of a prick in the end, would it?”

“Who knows, it might have taken,” John said, finishing off the last of his coffee and lighting a ciggie. “Anyway, I wouldn’t put up with me if I were in your shoes.”

Paul scoffed. “If that’s meant to make me feel better, it definitely does not.”

“So why do you stand for it?” said John.

Paul paused, left arm resting across his guitar. John could tell he was thinking. “Because I know what you’re like,” he said finally. “And you’ve always been shirty with me. Accustomed to it, I guess.”

“To be fair, I did use to be nicer,” John said.

“That’s on you to change, not me, love,” Paul said.

The casual, affectionate way he said “love” did not escape John.  “It’s me who should be apologising,” he said.

“You should and yet you haven’t. Funny,” said Paul.

John smirked. “Do you want me down on me knees?”

“I’d accept you standing up, too,” said Paul, walking square into the double entendre.

“Really!” said John. “That’s the nicest thing any bloke’s ever said to me.”

Paul looked bewildered, then it clicked. “Oh, yuck!” He scrunched his nose. “Christ, c’mon. Look, man, your head went there, not mine. What does that say?”

John set his ciggie in an ashtray and stood up. Paul tensed as he approached, sitting up straighter and getting a rather guarded look about him. "You can apologise from where you were sitting before," he said, sounding almost nervous. Ignoring him, John sank to one knee. He stretched clasped hands toward Paul. He knew what he was meant to say, but what came out was, “Penny for the guy?”

“Get out, you soft git!” Paul said, trying and failing to keep a straight face. He laughed.

“You know words aren't my strong suit,” John said, slipping a finger out of the single fist his hand made and playing with the corner of Paul's dressing gown, which dangled by his ankle.

“You only have to say one,” Paul said. “I believe it begins with S. And stop that.” He swatted John’s hand away.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t seem to be in my vocabulary,” John said, moving his hand to Charo.

“No, I suspect it isn’t,” Paul said. “I don’t think you’ve ever said it in your life.”

“I did when the Yanks got me for slagging off Jesus,” John said.

“Yeah, and they had to wring it out of you like a fucking dishcloth.” Paul gave him a lopsided grin.

“I could be wrung again if you really tried,” said John, looking up into his face from his position on the floor.

“Did that last night, thanks,” said Paul, with a definite hint of cheek to his voice. “I'd prefer you say it freely, anyway.”

John studied Charo in lieu of answering. Micha and Sasha came with fussy little pedigrees tracing them back to King Charles I or something, but Charo was a classic moggie and for some reason he liked her better for it. She knew how far she had come and always seemed more grateful for her dinner and a warm, sun-filled window than the other two.

He played it off as a game, but when you got right down to it, sorry was a hard word to say. His chiefest goal since the band split was to prove he could function better without Paul. The plan had worked—until Yoko left and he’d become his own nightmarish Nowhere Man. No One Man. Nothin’ doing nowhere. That’s when it had gone pear-shaped. No wonder he’d spent the better part of both _Rock ‘n’ Roll_ and _Walls and Bridges_ babbling his way through buckets of blow and sloshing his way through barrels of drink. He hadn’t been able to face listening to either album since shortly after their recording. They had a skinless quality about them, as though he’d written them with all his muscles and sinews exposed. With no Paul and Yoko around, the music simply hadn’t favoured him as it once did.  

Contrary to what Mr With-a-Little-Luck thought, he did put work into his marriage as soon as Yoko took him back—so much wooing, promising, and cleaning up his act that there was no time whatsoever for music. Of course then she’d fallen pregnant and that was a full-time job unto itself, making sure she was getting the right proportions of all the right foods and doing everything the stars demanded on a particular day. When Sean was born, his perfect chubby arms and big dark eyes were more satisfying than any song John had ever heard himself shouting on the radio. He was more than enough creation for the first couple years.

At first.

Babies became less of a creation, though, as they grew up. They began to acquire opinions for themselves and make their own art with crayons and paste. They needed less of you. They were there for their own purposes.

During his pointless Lost Weekending and full-time housewifery, Paul was harvesting number-one singles and touring like mad, all while expanding his flawless family. John kept looking for signs in the cards and astrological charts that Paul’s next album was going to flop or Linda was going to leave him, but his charmed existence merely improved. The more John despised Paul and his numberless accomplishments, the more Paul seemed to blossom. Even the bloody _Guinness Book of World_ Records had gotten in on the conspiracy that autumn, giving Paul a disc made out of precious metal and crowning him Best Singer-Songwriter of All Fucking Time. Why did Paul need John’s apology with three-quarters of the world grovelling at his feet?

Above him, Paul resumed strumming, no longer waiting.

John sighed. Yin and yang, love and hate, peace and war.

“ _Laugh when your eyes are burning_ ,” Paul sang in a minor key, sad and soft. “ _Smile when your heart is filled with pain_.” John didn’t recognise the song. “ _Sigh as you brush away your tears. Make a vow that it’s not gonna happen again_.”

Paul tilted his chin and leaned into the music, nodding his head.

_“It’s not right_

_In one life_

_Too much rain.”_

His voice on the last three words of the chorus was high and pure in a way that made John’s throat tighten.

“ _You know the wheels keep turning. Why do the tears come down like rain? We used to hide away our feelings. But for now, tell yourself it won’t happen again_.”

Listening to him made John remember why it was worthy ever trying to write anything.

“ _It’s not right_

_In one life_

_Too much rain_.”

The strumming stopped. “I haven’t gotten to the bridge yet,” said Paul. “It should start off with piano, really. Da-da, da-da. Da-da, da-da …”

“It’s nice,” John said, swallowing somewhat hard.

“You mean that?” said Paul. His expression was wary.

“Yeah,” John said. “It’s about us, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said Paul. He bit his lower lip, thinking. “A lot of them are.”

John’s heart thudded. He’d always suspected as much. Each solo album Paul put out, he’d listened to like a Beatles fan on an acid trip, cocking his ear for hidden messages. Under any other circumstances, he wouldn’t have dared to ask Paul about it, but Paul’s strumming had dissolved some of the dread, loosening the stranglehold of his ego.

“‘Too Many People?’” John said.

Paul looked down at him, faintly guilty. “Yeah,” he said. “Not the entire thing, mind, just a few lines.”

“‘Dear Boy?’”

“Nah, that’s about Linda’s ex,” said Paul.

“Oh,” said John. He’d been convinced that one was most definitely about him. “‘Dear Friend’”?

“Obviously.”

“What else?”

“Hah! You’re getting greedy. I’m entitled to some secrets, you know,” Paul said, ducking his head and smiling as he strummed. “Perhaps I’ll tell you later, if you’re on your best behaviour.”

“I’ve written my share about you,” said John. Honest was the best fallacy.

Paul lifted an eyebrow. “Such as?”’

“‘Jealous Guy’, to begin with.”

“That?” Paul said, astonished.

“Not the music, it’s from India, you remember. I redid the words about you, though,” John said.

Paul’s cheeks had pinked up. “I thought that one was about Yoko and Cyn.”

John shook his head. “That’s how it’s meant to sound. There’s your apology, there. _I’m sorry that I made you cry_.” He fell silent. “I’m sorry, Paul.”


	8. Chapter 8

Paul didn’t answer, but the colour of his cheeks deepened. At last, he said, “Thanks.”

John got to his feet again, feeling strangely shy and out of sorts. Fortunately, he knew of a cure for that. “Fancy a smoke?”

“Now you’re talking,” Paul said, setting his guitar aside. “Wait a minute, I’ve got some brilliant stuff in my bag. You’ve got to try it.”

John followed him into the guest room. He was stunned at the size of the clear plastic bag tucked beneath the folded clothes in Paul’s suitcase. To John’s eyes, the fluffy wad of green looked to be a full kilo, though in reality it was probably much less.

“You brought that into the country?” he said, unbelieving. “What, are you fucking mad?”

Paul shrugged. “No one at customs ever bothers to look. Or if they do, they haven’t said anything yet!” He smiled and winked, sitting at the edge of the bed and dipping into the bag.

“You’re off your nut if you think you can keep getting away with that,” said John, still unconvinced.

Paul ignored him, sprinkling a rolling paper. “It’s Australian. Whacking good stuff. You won’t believe it.” He licked the edge of the rolling paper, looking, John had to admit, deviously handsome with his ruffled hair and five o’clock shadow. Having rolled a long thin joint, he passed it to John and held out a light.

John, obedient, inhaled. Paul was right on one account, anyway: this was top-notch grass. It tasted green and robust, like the smell of the earth after a rain. He closed his eyes and held in the smoke. Wordless, Paul reclaimed the joint, fingers skimming his. When John opened his eyes again, Paul was taking a drag, the butt end of the joint glowing and putting off a lovely, familiar fragrance. Lips pursed, he passed the joint back to John.

“Believe me, just one between us both will do it,” he said, exhaling.

John had another deep drag, taking a seat next to Paul. They traded the joint back and forth until it was too small to grasp anymore. John laid back, relaxation oozing into his every limb. Paul snubbed out the remnant of the joint and lay next to him, knees hanging off the bed. As if from a great distance, John watch him shut his eyes and knit his hands behind his head, elbows sticking into the air. Taking the cue, he stared up at the ceiling, too. For several minutes, they didn’t speak. He concentrated on the light fixture, feeling transported. This magic Australian grass made his favourite Thai and Indonesian stuff seem like parsley in comparison. With his mind blanked out, he felt better than he had for weeks. This was far superior to a hot bath, meditation, maybe even sex (not that he remembered what the latter felt like, with Yoko perpetually tied up with business or turning him down).

Time congealed as it always did during a particularly good high. Twenty minutes seemed to pass, yet when he rolled his eyes toward the clock, it registered barely five minutes past the last time he’d looked at it.

“Want me to make breakfast?” he said to Paul, feeling the faint stirrings of hunger.

“Yes, please,” Paul said. He sat up with some effort. “Whew! I am caned.”

“Are eggs okay?” said John, thinking of Paul’s diet.

“Eggs are good,” said Paul. His eyes looked a bit glazed.

John rose from the bed, having to think harder than usual about putting one foot in front of the other. In the kitchen, he sliced a loaf of bread and scraped a generous pat of butter into the frying pan. Paul retrieved his guitar and sat in John’s director’s chair, humming as he noodled about on it. The atmosphere was so changed from the night before that John reckoned they should have smoked some grass straight away. It wasn’t that his anxiety and despair had magically vanished, but the high was a bubble against the bad feelings, keeping them at bay. Normally, his ego got in the way of matters, but when he was high, he could relax about all the things that worried him, peer down at them like a guru from the tip of nose and pronounce them trivial. It even made him feel on the same wavelength as Paul.

Paul’s strumming got brisker, a definite song. Scrambling some eggs, John thought about asking him if he could give it a rest, but he didn’t have the energy for another argument. It did feel slightly like showing off, though: _Look at my fully functional muse._ What corner of the universe John’s muse had fled to, he hadn’t figured out yet, but it had been missing in action for years now. For countless months, he had barely gotten out of bed in the morning because of it. It had been days since he’d picked up his guitar. What use was a genius who couldn’t genius anything into existence anymore? Half of the time we’re gone, but we don’t know where, we don’t know where.

Fortunately for John’s mental wellbeing, Paul’s song wasn’t another dazzling original, but an old Everly Brothers standby, one that they’d fooled around with in Paul’s sitting room back in Allerton, but never consummated on stage. He couldn’t recall why it didn’t make it into their set, except that they generally preferred covering songs that hadn’t been chart-toppers.

“ _Never felt like this until I kissed ya. How did I exist until I kissed ya_?” Paul sang. “ _Never had you on my mind, now you’re there all the time. Never knew what I missed until I kissed ya_.”

The lyrics were mindless, typical fifties love song dreck, but still John looked at Paul with some suspicion, wondering if it were some sort of come-on. Paul was all innocence, however, looking out the window and not at John, tilting his head from side to side as he sang. He noticed too that Paul had taken Phil’s harmony and not Don’s melody, as if inviting him to join in. Not a chance of that.

“What do you want?” said John.

Paul broke off singing. “Hmm?” he said.

“You heard me, I said, ‘What do you want?’”

“I want breakfast,” said Paul.

“No, you know what I mean. I mean here, with me. What do you want to come of all this?”

Paul bit his lip, looking cagey.

“More than anything, you know, not just today. With us, what do you want?”

The eggs sizzled away in the pan, getting too brown.

“More than anything?” Paul repeated, looking him in the eyes.

“Yeah, more than anything.”

Paul was quiet for a moment or two. “I want to be mates again. None of the rest matters as much, I just want to us to be mates like we used to.”

The answer wasn’t what John expected. Maybe it wasn’t what he wanted, he didn’t know. Deliberate, not trusting himself to do it at non-stoned speed, he flipped the yellow circle of eggs. The bottom was overcooked, as he’d thought.

“And you know,” said Paul, “I think you had it right earlier about starting over.”

“How do you mean?” John said.

“Maybe the trick really is to forget about it. The past. Forget about the hard feelings and move on. Just start from where we are now and that.”

John shook his head, remembering blind hatred that had swallowed him up when Paul broke the news that the band had split up. He’d never imagined that Paul, who depended on the Beatles more than he and the two others combined, would have pounded the final nail in that coffin. For him, he knew more or less that they were finished, but keeping the possibility of reconciliation in his back pocket even as he began anew with Yoko had given him an agreeable power over Paul. As in, maybe we’ll get back together, maybe we won’t. And then the fucker had the audacity to walk into court wearing that pikey beard of his and sue the rest of them. After such hurt and humiliation, he swore he’d never forgive Paul for as long as he lived.

“That’s hard for me to do,” he said, slipping the turner under the eggs and sliding them onto a plate. “We’ve been over it I don’t know how many times.”

“I know that,” Paul said, looking grave. “I just want you to let me in again, even if it’s just for today. I’d even settle for a couple hours.”

John laughed, buttering a slice of toast. “You don’t want that, you just think you do. You’d be packing your bags immediately if you knew what goes on in this disgusting head of mine.” It was only half a joke. Paul wouldn’t be able to stand in his presence for a minute if he saw even a sliver of the blackened images that filled John’s mind every waking hour of every single day.

“I want a chance, I don’t care,” Paul said. His eyes were soft, perhaps a little sad. “I need you,” he said.

John’s heartbeat doubled in spite of him. “Rubbish,” he said. He sawed the disc of eggs in half with a steak knife, not meeting Paul’s eyes. “What on earth do you need me for? You’ve get your band, you’ve got your wife and fifteen kids, you’ve just been crowned Most Important Singer-Songwriter to Walk God’s Bloody Earth. What do you want with me?”

“That’s what I was talking about yesterday,” Paul said, frowning as John handed him a plate of toast and eggs and set down a coffee. He leaned back and set his guitar against the wall. “You think you’ve got my life pegged, but you haven’t.”

“Okay, so you’ve got four kids,” said John, taking a seat opposite Paul with his own toast and a smaller portion of eggs. “Unless Linda’s up the stick again.” He could tell that last remark bothered Paul, but Paul chewed a bite of toast and let it pass unchallenged. “What am I supposed to think? You’ve got an album every year, I hear your singles everywhere I go, and you can’t stop touring long enough to drop in once and awhile like you said you would. _Don’t say it, don’t say it, say anything, don’t say goodnight tonight_!” he said, singing the last bit.

Paul regarded him with unconcealed surprise. “I thought you didn’t follow my music.”

“I lie about everything, okay?” he said, spearing some egg with his fork. He couldn’t stop his mouth from twitching at the look on Paul’s face.

“Yeah, well, I figured you were full of shit,” Paul said, looking down and returning to his breakfast. “I’m just shocked you’re admitting it.”

“Try not to get used to it.” He took a bite of egg, remembering Paul’s video for “Goodnight Tonight.” He’d been dressed as a 1930s crooner, bearing more than a passing resemblance to Bing Crosby with his hair all slicked and ears jutting from his head. “I’d forgotten how your ears stick out.”

“What?” Paul said. “What do you mean, my ears?”

“The video with your hair all greased back. Your ears look massive.”

A bit of egg hit him square in the chest, falling into the recesses of his dressing gown. “Hey!”

Paul laughed. “I might have jugs for ears, but your reflexes are shite. Anyway, if we’re going to go there, I was thinking you could use a good shave. Bit scruffy-looking, aren’t we?”

John pulled the piece of egg out of his gown. Lucky for him, it had fallen on his stomach and not any lower. He tossed it to Sasha, sitting close by, and ran a hand through his beard, untouched for months. “Who’s there to impress? I don’t go out. It’s pointless to keep up appearances.”

“I like you better without,” said Paul. He leaned over and touched two fingers to John’s chest before he could react. “This, as well!” he said, and sat back “You’re skin and bones. When I first saw you yesterday, I thought you must be on junk.”

“Just high on life, Mother McCartney,” John said, arching an eyebrow. The sudden skin-on-skin contact had put him off his guard. He cleared his throat. “How many times must I tell you? It’s clean eating, that’s it. I’m not smoking H. I haven’t touched the stuff in years.”

“I eat a strict diet myself and I don't weigh eight stone,” said Paul, pointing his fork at him.

“Ten stone, thanks,” said John, shovelling in a big mouthful of eggs to make his point.

“That’s still absurd. You must see that’s not normal for a chap your height. Right? I shouldn't be able to feel your bloody ribcage through your chest.”

God, the man was persistent.

“One minute you’re saying you need me, the next you’re telling me how much I ought to weigh. Which is it, now?” John said. “You need someone to boss around, that’s why you want me. I'll wager Linda doesn’t put up with it from you.”

Paul opened, then closed his mouth. “She doesn’t. I’m just frightened for you sometimes, you know. I see you and you don’t look well in yourself.”

Funny that’s how Paul viewed it, because whenever his belly gnawed at him and he didn’t surrender to its demands, it made him feel good. With Sean growing up and Yoko playing businessman, and his muse abandoning him—or maybe it had taken up with Paul’s muse, now there was a thought—he was proud to have control over his own flesh. It was the one thing that he could subdue, call himself the master of. Besides, whatever Paul said, his diet was crackerjack. Sashimi, sushi, brown rice, bran muffins, and wholemeal bread. If anything, Paul was a bit too chubby-cheeked these days, probably getting fat on sugar and cheese.

“If we’re going to row again today, let’s row about more interesting stuff. Like why you think you need me,” said John.

Paul coughed, tapping a finger on the edge of the table. “I dunno, really. That just came out.” He gave a mild frown, contemplative. “I think it’s . . . no one’s on my level except Lin. I want someone else to take the reins once and awhile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the stretching hiatus. I was on a research visit in November which ate up the entire month, plus my laptop's on the fritz. Also I was a bit stuck on this last part, though I hope I've freed myself now. Do let me know what you think--comments are always appreciated, especially as I'm still playing the story by ear.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I thought I'd finish this story in time for Christmas, but sadly that's not happened as you can see. Maybe by Christmas 2017?

“Right. You need someone to boss around, like I said,” said John. He bit into his toast.

“C’mon,” Paul said. He was beginning to sound fed-up. “That’s not fair. Don’t try to reduce what we have, or whatever, into that. You know that’s not what I’m after.”

Maybe Paul’s star had started to fade at last and he was hoping for a bit of exposure with a reemergence of Lennon-McCartney. Maybe that was it.

“And for the last time, I was asked to show up here. I’m not after anything,” Paul said. He sipped some coffee, looking at John.

Christ, he was a bloody mind-reader.

“Alright,” John said, conciliatory. “I was just curious.” He coughed. “But you see from my perspective it looks like you’ve been keeping your distance.”

An emotion like discomfort crossed Paul’s face. “Been a bit busy, okay?” he said. “I didn’t think you’d be bothered.”

John turned the coffee mug in his hands. He didn’t have much to say to that, since they both knew his mood turned with the wind. Also, there wasn’t a roadmap for what to do when your best friend-cum-worst enemy consented to go to bed with you even though both of you agreed ten times over _it wasn’t like that_. If it was like that, John might have done a bit more homework, gone down to the bookshop to pick up some homosexual literature, but there wasn’t anything that anyone could tell him about Paul and him. Perchance there were two other rock stars out there in the same predicament—Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon?—but until they announced themselves, he and Paul were the only two birds of a feather stuck together.

Paul pushed the crusts of his half-eaten toast around on his plate with a finger. “Anyway, it was a hell of a year last year. We had the baby, and then the album, then Laurence and Steve joined the band …” He looked up and cleared his throat. “And you’re shirty when I call, we already talked about that. I can’t tell what sort of humour you’ll be in.”

“Once bitten, twice shy,” John said.

“You could say that,” said Paul. He brought a finger up and rubbed the side of his nose. “‘Call Me Back Again.”

“What’s that?” John said, not understanding.

“My song, off _Venus and Mars_. That one’s about us, too.”

Fuck a cow, how many more? “Hadn’t crossed my mind, that one,” said John.

“Can’t make them too obvious. What would be the fun otherwise?” Paul said, his mouth quirking a little. “At any rate, I’ll hang around today if you want me.”

John sipped his coffee. He could pretend surprise that Paul wanted to stay, but as soon as he’d seen him sitting in the window an hour ago, he knew he was stuck with him for better or for worse.

“If you’re going to do that,” said John, slow, intending to feel him out, “you might as well know I’ve got nothing planned.”

“That’s no bother,” Paul said, his face relaxing. “We can think of something.”

Even high, John’s flesh crawled with anxiety at the thought. They’d gotten lucky yesterday, going about virtually unrecognised, but experience told him not to press it.

He remembered a time when Paul would show up Kenwood, dressed to the nines in expensive clothes, the very picture of a Swinging London dandy, and invite him to the clubs or the theatre, but the idea made him feel the way he was now feeling about strolling the New York streets at Christmastime. He always turned Paul down. And eventually Paul had stopped asking. “I’d prefer to stay in,” he said.

“Stay in a lot now?” said Paul.

The question made John want a cigarette, but the pack was on his bedside table. “Yes,” he said. Every day for the last eighteen months, practically.

“Go on and stop me if I’m prying,” said Paul, in a tone that said the opposite, “but why, man?”

Why indeed. He’d as soon die as confess it to Prolific Paul McCartney, but he’d just slogged through possibly the worst darkness of his life—worse, even, than the Beatles split—only to find that things were just as much in shambles as they were before he’d begun lying in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and the telly glowing, leaving only to take a shit or scrounge something to eat if none of the help was around to bring him meals. He didn’t understand what he’d pulled himself together for, if all the awaited him was more of the same: more of Yoko’s harebrained business ventures, more of her tiptoeing, more of her careful whispers to the staff, more of her insistence that he be ready at a moment’s notice to board a plane to some far-off corner of the earth to rid himself of bad karma. When he was feeling vulnerable or down, which was most of the time, he half-believed the rituals, but sometimes he played along just to keep the peace, or what little of it remained since he’d gotten back together with Yoko. He despaired of ever having real answers.

He wasn’t so out-of-touch that he didn't recognise the dysfunction of his marriage and longed-for normal family life. Everything he tried to do to make improvements or amends backfired, always, until they were back to business as usual—Sean being minded by Helen, Yoko shrieking down the telephone line, Good King John hiding out in the bedroom waiting for the poisonous atmosphere to quieten. He didn’t bother confiding in anything except his journal. He considered trying on a change like a new blazer, but the conclusion was never different. His routine gave him the security he needed. He was safe from critics, hangers-on, idolisers and idolaters, and women who might tempt his feverish libido. That was worth all the other things he might be sacrificing.

“Lots of reasons,” he said, in reply to Paul. “I don’t feel like discussing it.”

“Just trying to do my job,” Paul said. “Cheer you up and that.”

“I’m a hopeless case,” John said, trying to make a joke of it. “Washed-up, washed-out. You’re better off looking after yourself.”

Paul gave a short laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m not exactly full of Christmas cheer myself.”

“Yeah. Must be torture to be able to write songs and perform them to an adoring crowd,” John said, before he could stop himself.

Paul arched an eyebrow. “What’s stopping you?”

John looked him full in the eye. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that I seem to lack a muse anymore?” he said. “Or do you think I just gave up writing songs for the fun of it?”

“Bosh,” said Paul. His face was guileless. “Of course you’ve got a muse.”

“Put a sock in it, McCartney.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “I’m having a ciggie.” He stalked off to the bedroom.

“Hey, hang on,” said Paul, calling after him. He appeared in the doorway of John’s bedroom a few second later, fast on John’s heels. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

John plopped onto the bed, the cigarette already blessedly between his lips. He swiped a match. The first drag returned some of the steel to his spine. “Just don’t come here presuming to know things,” he said. “If I say the spark’s gone out of it, then the spark’s gone out of it.”

“What about the songs you played me a couple years ago?” said Paul, sitting on the corner of the bed a respectful distance away. “When, uh …”

John refused to look at him. “Those weren’t worth a damn and you know it.”

“I happened to like them,” Paul said. “Can I have a ciggie?”

“Scrounger,” John said. But he passed one over.

“Light?” said Paul, gripping the cigarette in one corner of his mouth. John gave him one. Paul took a deep drag, eyes fluttering closed. Then he sighed, satisfied.

John looked away again. It was still all quite confusing, the feelings Paul brought to the forefront of his mind.

“When’s the last time you saw something other than these four walls, eh?” Paul said. When he opened his eyes again, they were heavy and stoned.

“Yesterday, as I seem to recall,” said John. “But I guess you’re gonna tell me I imagined all that.”

“Besides yesterday, I mean,” Paul said, lying back.

“I was in Japan this bloody summer,” said John, hoisting his legs onto the bed and sitting with his back to the headboard.

“Did you get out?” said Paul.

“Of course I fucking got out! We had trips to the seaside, trips to the mountains, trip to the markets, we were all just one fucking big happy family,” said John, glaring at him. It drove him mad to be around Yoko’s mum and nieces and kin, nattering in a language he didn’t understand and begging constant presents off Uncle John from America. Left to his own devices, he would have preferred to have spent the time watching telly in a hotel room and seeking out the friendly hand of a masseuse a couple times a week.

Paul’s expression, slack and stoned though it was, told John he didn’t believe a word of it. “If you ask me …”

John cut him off. “I didn’t.” He could feel Paul’s questions getting to him. Even with the weed in his system, his muscles were flexed in that fight-or-flight way.

“Right, technically you don’t have to ask, but I’m going to say it, anyway,” Paul said. He sat up, looking slightly dazed, then clambered onto the bed on all fours, dressing gown hanging off his chest in such a way that made John feel rather discomposed. He fell clumsily into a half-recumbent position next to John’s left elbow. His closeness was uncomfortable, off-putting. John found himself staring into Paul’s eyes. “I don’t think your muse has gone anywhere,” Paul said. “It just needs light and air, and you’re not giving it any.”

“God, Paul, you’re wasted. Shut up, will you?” He edged away.

“When you sit in this flat eleven months out of the year, what does your muse feed off of?” said Paul. “If your mates aren’t about and your wife’s at work, who does it talk to?”

“My muse ain’t a society dame,” John said.

Paul tutted. “She used to be. You used to take her out to the clubs and off to places like India. You let her run around the streets of Hamburg like a proper tart. She used to see people other than—” He hesitated, giving John a look. “Other than Yoko, you know? She used to see all sorts of people. It was good for her to get out.”

“You act as if I’m not fighting to get her back, Paul,” he said, willing himself not to break eye contact. “I’ve been trying for years. It’s doing me head in, okay? Every time she turns me down, it gets worse and worse.”

“Yeah, because you’re not doing anything new with her,” said Paul. “She wants to meet new people and hang out with old mates. When you were with May, she got to do that all the time.”

“Don’t,” John said, hiding his face. “Don’t fucking mention her name, alright?” It hurt too much to think about May, like a blade to the guts. He’d come so close to ringing her before Paul had shown up. He was angry Paul had brought her up.

Paul laid a hand on his arm. “Look, please. I don’t want to have another barney,” he said. He sounded cautious. “I’m just pointing out your world’s gotten a lot smaller. You used to do things.” He caught himself and added, hasty, “I’m not talking about writing music, I mean just social things, you know.”

“And so what?” John said, taking a deep pull from his cigarette.

Paul sighed, looking away and biting his lip. “You’re not happy,” he said. He turned back and held up a hand before John could so much as open his mouth. “Hold off, don’t even start. You can’t bullshit me of all people. We lived together for ten fucking years, practically. I know when you’re feeling unhappy.”

That was not going to pass without a fight. “I’ve got Yoko back and I’ve got Sean.” He frowned. “What more do you think I ought to have? A family of fourteen like yours?”

“You’re doing it, you’re bullshitting me,” said Paul, giving John a nudge. “I don’t know the whole of it, but if I had to have a guess, I’d say you’re out of sorts because you want to write again and something’s stopping you.” He paused a moment, chewing his lip. “That’s why Yoko’s asked me here, I’m sure of it.”

John had an idea of why Yoko had summoned Paul and it was not that. He’d always thought she found the idea of him doing something musical with Paul again threatening; to her mind, her own musical ambitions should be sufficient for John. “That ain’t it, mate.” He grabbed an ashtray and stubbed out his butt.

“You’re not the only one who’s got this problem, anyway,” Paul said, so casual that John didn’t get the implication.

“What problem’s that?” He tightened his lips.

“Music,” said Paul.

“Bloom gone off the rose, finally?” John said, not feeling in the least sympathetic.

“Fuck off,” Paul said, shifting his leg over and kicking John’s shin, light, but still hard enough to hurt. He scooted around John and to the edge of the bed. “I’m going to shower,” he said, standing up and stretching. “Where d’ya keep the towels?”

The conversation was done quick as that. John got up and led him to the linen cupboard. He was burning to know what Paul had meant by his remark about music, but didn’t want to ask since he sensed that was the point. So he handed Paul a towel and retreated to the bedroom, longing to sleep the rest of the day away.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where is this story going? You know as well as I do. Let me know if I'm on the right track. I kind of choked up (writing-wise, that is) during the end of this installment.

John was having a ciggie and another cup of coffee at the kitchen table and reading the _Times_ when Paul emerged from his bath, whistling and towelling his head. He smelled warm and clean, like floral shampoo.

“Ta,” he said, walking past John and picking up his guitar. He was still wearing his dressing gown.

John grunted.

“ _Things have really changed since I kissed ya_ ,” Paul resumed, in an idle way. He gave the guitar a few strums. “ _My life’s not the same now that I kissed ya_.”

John raised an eyebrow and gave him what he hoped was a sour look.

“Just gonna sit in the other room and work on my song if that’s okay,” he said, evidently not put off by their earlier conversation.

“Have at it,” John said, flipping the page and not really seeing the headlines he was trying to read.

“Maybe we can pop off to the cinema after I’m done, see a film or something.”

John shook his head. He thought he’d made his feelings on that clear. “Uh-uh. It puts me on edge, all those fuckers staring at me,” he said. “Even if they’re not on you for an autograph or a picture, you know that they know you’re there and you can’t just relax, you know?”

Paul sighed, the smiling falling from his lips. “Just don’t tell Yoko that I didn’t try.”

John ignored the last remark, turning another page even though he hadn’t read the last one.

By and by, he heard the strumming of a guitar start up again and Paul singing along in that pure, pretty way of his. He tried to go back to reading the paper, but Paul’s words were still there in his head, the ones he’d said as he’d knocked John to the floor last night, the bitter ones he spoke in John’s bedroom and left unfinished. It was too distracting. John scooted his chair away from the table, stubbing out his cigarette.

“Fuck a duck,” he muttered.

He stretched and caught an unpleasant whiff of himself. He definitely hadn’t had a wash yesterday and maybe not the day before that.

“ _No more rain_ ,” sang Paul from the other room, each note long and enunciated.

John walked to the toilet and sat on the edge of the bathtub. As he turned on the tap, he did wonder at Yoko’s logic. What Paul didn’t know is that he had never told Yoko about the things that had first happened between them a couple years ago. Oh, he was sure she’d guessed well enough what he and Paul been up to, especially since he’d talked so much about the possibility with her beforehand. But when she asked that question, “So how did it go?”, it came to him that the memory was too precious to sacrifice to her calculations and her psychics. He didn’t want to give her any power over it. From time to time, she’d mention it, until one day he roared at her in such a way she hadn’t brought it up since. Her calling Paul here—maybe it was an offering of some kind. She was giving him permission to … to what? Or was she giving him back to Paul, the only other person in the world save her (and maybe May) that he’d truly been close with? Had his bad temper and rubbish parenting driven her off for good?

He put his feet in the water, testing the temperature. Whatever her plan was, he was willing to bet it wasn’t unfolding like she’d intended.

When the bathtub was full, he undid his dressing gown and slid in. He spent the better part of an hour topping up the water from the hot tap and letting all thoughts run from his brain as he meditated the way he’d been taught in the heavy, uncomfortable heat of India all those years ago.

His mind was sleepy and empty when Paul’s voice came from the other side of the door: “Alright in there?”

The meditational calm was gone in a flash. “I was until you started shouting,” he said, sitting up.

“Fuck you, too,” said Paul, but there was no anger in his voice. His footsteps faded down the hall.

John took a deep, chesty breath trying to return to the tranquil place he’d been a minute ago, but it was gone. The water had begun to go cold, so he stood up and lathered himself quickly with a bar of soap. He scrubbed the thicket of hair on his cheeks until it bloomed with suds, then he submerged himself in the water again until it was all rinsed away. He didn’t bother washing his head; once in a fortnight was enough, and he didn’t like to be reminded, when his fingers brushed certain naked spots on his forehead, that his hairline was receding.

He pulled the drain plug and stepped out of the tub, reaching for a towel. His beard was hard to get dry.

On impulse, he called, “Hey, Paul! C’mere.”

A few moments later, Paul knocked on the door. “Whaddya want?”

“Get in here,” John said.

The door swung open a crack and Paul peered around the corner, looking cautious.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to assault your person,” said John, scowling and gesturing to the towel around his waist. He sat on the lid of the loo and held out a hair clipper. “Plug it in and have a go.”

“What?” Paul said, still looking nervous.

“You don’t like the beard, let’s get rid of it,” John said. “Go on, I’m ready now.” He stuck out his chin.

Paul took the clipper, reluctant. “Couldn’t you just do this yourself, you know?”

“If I felt like doing it meself, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” John said. “Chop me before I change me mind.”

Paul looked down, fiddling with the switch of the clipper. “Where d’ya want me to start?” he said, meeting John’s eyes.

“Start where the hair grows, you daft arse,” said John. Paul furrowed his brows and brought the whirring clipper up to John’s right cheek. A clump of hair tumbled down John’s chest and into his lap. “That’s a lad,” John said.

“All of it?” Paul said, bringing his eyes to John’s again.

“All of it,” John said, putting his palms face-down on his thighs.

Paul took the job very seriously. He pressed the fingers of his other hand to John’s cheek, tautening the skin so he could angle the clipper better, and trimmed away, increasing the pile of hair in John’s lap by the second. It was a bloody mess, with bits of hair sticking to the damp skin of John’s shoulders and torso. If he’d been thinking, he would have had Paul do it before his bath.

“How do I look?” John said after a few minutes, feeling itchy and uncomfortable.

“Terrible,” said Paul, standing back to appraise his work and grinning. “Like a half-skinned stoat. Tempted to leave you like this.”

“Finish the job,” John said, pointing to his chin and upper lip.

“Don’t want to nick you,” Paul said.

“You won’t, just lop it off and let’s be done with it,” John said.

Paul leaned forward, the chest of his dressing gown fluttering open, and put the clipper beneath John’s nose. He looked so deathly serious that John laughed, which brought his skin in contact with the teeth of the clipper. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing his lip.

“Sit still,” Paul said, leaning closer. He worked the clipper under John’s nose and down over his chin for several moments.

“Now?” said John, as Paul took a step back to regard him.

“Your neck’s a right mare’s nest, but I reckon you can clean it up with a razor,” he said, turning the clipper off.

“Fucking hell,” John said, looking into his lap at what was formerly months of growth. “What am I going to do with this?”

Paul looked around and spotted the bin. He pushed it over to John with a foot. “Are we done?” he said.

“Unless you want to help hoover this up,” John said, eyeing his lap.

“I’ll be in your drawing room,” Paul said, and slipped out the door.

His sudden wary manner didn’t elude John. It made him feel like a predator when Paul got that way, as if their past activities somehow hadn’t been mutually agreed upon. Paul was safe, though. John didn’t feel brave enough this time around to press anything.

He wadded up the towel, trying to capture as much hair as he could before standing up, and tossed it in the laundry bin. He looked at himself in the mirror. He did look like a half-shaved weasel. But Paul could have done worse. John pulled a can of Barbasol out of the medicine cabinet and shook it, then patted his face and neck until they had vanished under foam. When he finished shaving, his body was plastered in hair, but he could see the contours of his face for the first time since the prior summer. He stepped into the bath once more and rinsed himself, trying to see his flesh as Paul might. In clothes, he could cut a trim figure, but outside of them he had the look of a 70-year-old junkie, pale skin flabby in places and all but hanging in others. God, it was disgusting. No wonder Paul was afraid of getting close to him.

He felt slightly better a few minutes later when he was dry and restored to his dressing gown, but not much. He pushed open the toilet door and went into the sitting room. Paul was on his knees in front of the dry Christmas tree, stringing lights through the lower branches. John switched on the telly, then sat on the sofa and laid his feet on the coffee table. “Still haven’t given up on that crap thing, eh?” he said.

“You could help, you know,” Paul said, half-disappearing behind it with his hands full of lights.

John flicked the buttons on the changer. All three stations were playing soaps, as if he hadn’t had the schedule memorised for months now. He put the television on mute and turned his eyes to Paul.

“Make sure you get ‘em nice and even,” he said.

“Fat chance of that,” Paul said, coming back around the other side again. “I don’t think I bought enough.” He was silent a little while as he wound the lights about the tree. “When do you, uh, expect Yoko back?”

John kept his eyes on the telly. “Not today,” he said.

“You positive on that?” Paul said.

“Why’re you so keen on knowing?” John said, feeling ill at ease again.

“I don’t know,” Paul said.

“She’ll call before she comes back,” said John. “Or she’ll have Fred call.”

Paul stopped. “You’re certain?”

“Yeah, she’s gone, okay?” he said, snapping. “Any other questions?”

Paul gave him an inscrutable look. “No.”

John watched the end of one soap and the beginning of the next, not seeing either. Paul kept quiet, working on the tree.

 Presently, Paul appeared next to the sofa. He was holding a blue bauble. “Wanna help deck it?” he said.

John looked up and glared at him. “No.”

The bauble fell into his lap.

“C’mon.”

John considered lobbing it at the telly and watching it shatter against the screen, but thought in time about Sean’s bare feet. “Can you not do this?” he said, holding the bauble out to Paul.

“What else am I meant to do for the next two days?” Paul said, undaunted.  

“Go to the cinema, go see the bleeding Rockettes, just don’t bother me, okay?” John said. He couldn’t look Paul in the face. “Just please leave me alone, Paul.”

Paul sighed, a weighty noise full of displeasure, but rather than leave the room, he just kept standing there as John stared ahead at the telly. The old battle of wills. John was in practice and Paul wasn’t, though.

At last, after what seemed like half an hour, Paul walked away. John heard him bustling in the other room. He wondered if Paul was packing, and would he take a hotel room or simply fly back to Scotland with no explanation. When Paul appeared in the doorway several minutes later, John tried not to flinch.

“I remembered the rest of the words to the Dylan song,” said Paul, and John had to struggle not register a twitch of emotion. “It goes, ‘I wish there was something you’d do or say, to try and make me change my mind to stay.’”

John looked over, keeping his face flat. Paul was buttoning his coat, but didn’t have any bags in hand. “Keys are on the wall in the foyer,” said John, though he wasn’t certain if Paul meant to come back.

“I’ll just say fare thee well,” Paul said.

John didn’t answer.

 

 

Paul didn’t return before nightfall. Then it was midnight, and he still hadn’t come back to the Dakota. At half-past twelve, curiosity got the better of John and he looked into the guest room where earlier he and Paul had shared the joint. The bed was empty and the duvet rumpled, and for a heart-stopping moment he couldn’t see a trace of Paul’s luggage. He flicked on the light-switch, a frantic lump in his throat. Paul’s suitcase was half shoved under the bed and his parcels from yesterday afternoon were sitting on a table. John turned the light off, feeling as though he was going mad.

Because there was nothing else to do, he went into his own bedroom, shut the door behind him, and crawled into his bed. He realised as soon as he ducked under the blankets that the room was too cold, but he didn’t have the will to get up again. His stomach hurt from the greasy takeaway chips and burger he’d ordered earlier. Given his druthers, he’d have nibbled some marmalade toast, but he’d felt the need to prove he wasn’t as uptight about food as Paul had accused him of being. He fidgeted beneath the blankets, cold and restless.

 _The Tonight Show_ had ended, the American national anthem had played to images of the US flag rippling in the wind, and the telly was nothing but hissing static now. He was too lazy to turn it down, and anyway the bedroom felt less lonely and dark with the screen glowing. He thought about Paul walking out the door two days from now and wondered whether Yoko would have forgiven him by then. He wondered if he felt lonely at the thought of Paul being gone or if he felt lonely because there was no other way for him to be. It seemed foolish to have ever left the bed in the first place. What had changed, really? He was a little more present for the noise and static of the Lennon Empire, that was all.

He was nothing more than a china figurine of a man restored to his cupboard for safekeeping and cherishing. If he’d been a stevedore in Liverpool instead of a Beatle, with a plump little missus to screech at him when he came home late from the pub, maybe he’d be happier now. Sure he might die of a bloated liver aged fifty-two, but at least it would have been a life well-lived. No one would have locked him in a china cupboard if he’d been that man.  

He twisted onto his side toward the window. With the curtains drawn and the activity of the city invisible, the sense that he was all alone intensified. It was easy to forget Paul had been there a few hours ago and that Sean had been running riot through the rooms less than two days before. He imagined that he could feel his chest throbbing as if from a wound. He wanted another woman like Yoko, who was strong enough to pull him out of himself and help him dream again. You’d think they’d be mobbing you every place you went when you were John Beatle Lennon, but nowadays they were more interested in autographs than they were shags. He didn’t have the courage to chat the up the way he used to, besides. One sideways glance from Yoko was all it took. Sometimes it took much less—just the thought of that glance was enough to cow him, or worse yet the memory of shrewd salaryman Yoko, who took a perverse pleasure in micromanaging his love affairs which thereby sucked the joy out of them. Most of the time it was just easier to do without sex and take what satisfaction he could from his fantasies.

He shivered, wishing someone was about to fetch him some socks or an extra blanket. Or adjust the bloody radiator knob. A stevedore or a sailor, those would have been better occupations for him. His first mate would be a blonde with big fucking tits and a white sailor’s dress cut halfway up her bare arse. That would do just fine. He was drifting off to sleep while making love on the waves when he thought he heard his door creak. The blonde and her lovely blonde fanny evaporated. He blinked, feeling a bit dazed. His first thought was that it must be Yoko, deciding that in spite of everything she couldn’t stay away.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hush, it’s just me,” said Paul. He touched John on the shoulder.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” said John, turning his head and searching for Paul’s face in the darkness.

“I just got in ten minutes ago. The wind out there is bloody murder,” said Paul. Deprived of his glasses, John could barely make out his figure in the dark. Paul was sliding beneath the blankets before he could speak, saying, “Get over.”

“Paul …” he said.

“Shh,” said Paul, his warm clothed shoulder knocking John’s bare one.

John hadn’t come to grips with the fact that Paul hadn’t holed up in a hotel room for the night, let alone that he was now in bed with him. Paul scooted forward, deliciously warm, fitting his body against John’s. John’s mind went proper blank at that. They huddled there for a tick, John savouring the heat and the intimacy. Then Paul thrust a frigid hand onto John’s belly.

John yelped. “Jesus, get off you son-of-a-bitch!”

“Mmm,” said Paul, spreading his hand as John tried to prise him away. He laughed. “You’re nice and warm.”

“Gerroff!” John said. After a brief scuffle, he managed to peel Paul’s hand away. He tried flipping onto his back, but Paul held him in place. A cold nose burrowed into the nape of his neck.

“I’d never leave you like this, you fucking twit,” said Paul. “Now keep still, I’ll be warm in a minute.”

John wanted to make a wisecrack, but Paul’s arm slid around him and he could only gulp. He found Paul’s cold hand and gripped it. What he couldn’t seem to find was words.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know what excuse to offer except that you readers need to flog me more about this story! I wish I was as prolific as some of the rest of you. Each time I release a chapter it feels like I've climbed a mountain, then I look down and see I'm only 2,000 words high. In fairness, I have a bunch of Career Stuff coming up in early March and I've got to work on that in earnest starting yesterday. 
> 
> Anyway, though, I storyboarded it a bit and I now have a clearer idea of where it's leading. After this evening, Paul and John have one more night together at the Dakota. Any suggestion for what activities they should get up to?

__He felt like crying, but falling apart in Paul’s arms wasn’t something he cared to live down during the light of day. He’d been aroused, what with the fantasy of the boating blonde, but now all he felt like doing was melting into tears. He lay there in silence and let Paul’s body warm his. He couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t make his voice crack. Paul’s icy hand was beginning to heat under his own. He smelled like beer and stale cigarettes. John wondered where he’d gotten off to—probably somewhere posh like Lutèce, comporting himself with his usual perfect aristocratic grace and charm despite his council estates upbringing. Paul never had any difficulty going off and entertaining himself at the drop of a hat, and it bothered John to no end.

Paul snuggled closer. “God, is it ever bloody cold out there. I don’t see how you can bear it.” He squeezed John’s hand.

John swallowed. There were a lot of things he couldn’t bear and did.

Paul yawned, his breath hot against John’s neck. It was heavy and sour. “Sorry to wake you, anyway.”

“Never mind,” said John, attempting to sound normal.

They fell quiet again. John didn’t see how he was going to ever fall asleep now, with his thoughts pirouetting once more and Paul so unexpectedly near. He felt afraid to move, as though shifting might send Paul running like a finicky cat.

“ _I got a girl named Bony Moronie_ ,” Paul said, low and gentle. Definitely wankered from his night out on the town. “ _She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni_ …”

The tune jolted John smack into the centre of Hamburg again, where longagoJohn and longagoPaul ruled the very world from the stage in skintight leather with their rock ‘n’ roll screams. It was like one of those acid flashbacks people went on about; he could taste the dry smoky air in his mouth and hear the laughter and din of the Germans in the audience, the way it felt to howl over them to make himself heard, anger and energy—okay, and Prellies—charging through his veins like blue fire.

“ _Oughta see her rock ‘n’ roll with her blue jeans on, she’s not very fat, just skin and bone_.”

It was in Hamburg that he’d known for one of the last few times in his life what he really wanted: music. Music and Paul.

The two things he didn’t have now.

“ _I love her, and she loves me_ ,” said Paul, in a lullaby-like way, “ _and oh how happy now we gonna be_ …”

John bit his bottom lip as the tears came. He wanted to crawl away before Paul could hear him sniffling, but that would be its own giveaway. His son was out there somewhere in the New York night, missing his daddy at Christmas while mummy was possibly thinking about divorcing daddy. Paul would be in Scotland by Christmas Day to carry on with his spectacular musical career, and John would be left with sweet fuck-all. He tightened his ribs so they wouldn’t heave and tried not to break down entirely as Paul hummed on, unaware.  The tears shimmered in his eyes, spilled down his cheeks, welled up again. He sucked in a noisy, juddering breath, which gave it away.

“Hey, are you crying?” Paul said, poking his head over John’s shoulder.

“Fuck off,” said John. He closed his eyes and tried slow his breathing.

Paul cleared his throat. John could virtually hear the cogs turning in his liquored brain. Instead of saying anything exasperating, though, Paul laid back down and put his arm about John again, finding his hand and lacing his fingers through John’s. He buried his face between John’s shoulders, forehead still cold from the night air. “Just let me know what you need,” he said. His thumb stroked John’s hand.

The tenderness made John felt weak and fragile, like thin ice glazing a barely frozen puddle. It occurred to him that he was positively starved for kindness; the last time Yoko had held him in her arms like this had been months ago. He was grateful for Paul’s touch and his closeness, never mind that he did smell like he’d been marinating in a vat at the distillery. The tears continued to slip down his cheek, pooling hotly in one of his ears. Everything was imbued with an intent to be lost, the friends and lovers who had once mattered, his musical genius, his sense of reason—and Paul, forever slipping out of his grasp.

“I hit the kid,” he blurted. He couldn’t bring himself to say Sean.

“What?” Paul said.

“I hit my kid.” It was hard enough saying it the first time, but repeating it made the heat rush to his cheeks.

Paul’s thumb stopped. There was a pause. “Hard?” said Paul.

“Hard enough,” said John, his voice thickening.

He could sense Paul thinking it over, giving it a good chew. He knew Paul would try to excuse his rubbish behaviour next, give him an easy out.

“Nobody's perfect,” Paul said finally.

“Oh? You ever hit one of yours?”

Paul coughed. “Well, I—”

“No,” John finished for him. “You haven’t.”

“Well, I’ve—yelled at them pretty good,” Paul said. John could tell he was trying his hardest to be game.

“So hard you hurt their ears and they had to go to the doctor because of you?” said John. He sniffed, trying to clear his nose and throat of snot.

“No,” said Paul. “Wait a minute. Are you saying ...?”

“I’m saying I’m not bloody cut out for this, Paul,” John said, turning onto his back. He sniffed again. Paul’s arm remained, stretched across his chest. “It doesn’t fit. I give it me best go and anytime I start to think I’ve got the hang of it, something goes wrong. This isn’t who I am.”

Paul’s arm tightened around him. “It’s all of a piece,” he said.

“No. It ain’t. It’s ‘cos I’m a piece of shit, that’s all it is. I just shout at people. I don’t want to, but I do. I’m angry all the time and I can’t clock why. I can’t even stand to be around my own kid half the time. Then I start thinking about Julian and I know it’s going wrong with Sean too and I don’t know why I ever thought … I just I can’t be normal.”

Now that he’d confessed at last, he couldn’t seem to stop the words coming out. Tears continued to seep into his ears.

“Shh,” said Paul, bringing his head close to John’s shoulder. “Maybe you should look at it this way.”

John stopped him short. “Don’t give me any advice. Alright? I get enough of that from Mother. Everything I do or say goes under the microscope. The psychicscope. I’m not asking you to fix it, that’s not the point.”

“Is that why they’re not here, Sean and Yoko?” Paul said. His forehead pressed against the skin of John’s shoulder.

“Aye. You win the prize,” said John.

“So that’s why Yoko was so keen on me flying over,” said Paul.

John frowned through his tears. “I don’t know what she wants with you. She walked out without telling me a thing. Maybe she thinks the perfect dad can teach me a thing or two.”

“I’m not the perfect anything and please stop saying it,” Paul said, sounding vexed. “I’m just Paul.”

“No,” John said. “You’re more than just Paul.” He tired to translate his thoughts into words. Paul of charm, Paul of light, first Paul I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, be like Paul and not a blight.

“No I’m not. I’m just Paul. It’s not on you to decide who I am. I’m the same chap I’ve always been,” Paul said. Though slightly slurred, his voice was firm. “All you have to do is call me up.”

The sentence was laden with meaning, but whether Paul referred to a relationship that stretched beyond the platonic or a desire to be friends and musical partners again, John couldn’t tell.

“So tell me why it’s so bloody easy for you and impossible for me.” He wouldn’t have had this conversation in the daytime, when he could look Paul in the eye, for all the tea in China, but the darkness and his tears loosened his tongue.

“I haven’t got the answer to that one,” said Paul. “I just do what comes naturally or whatever, you know? I mean, don’t forget I’m the one who had to start over. I would have been happy to stay in the band and just keep it going. And Linda and I were always going to have a family. I like kids, I don’t know what to tell you.” He took a deep breath and huffed it out. “I don’t know how to make you happy. Looking over myself is quite enough of a job.”

John was a bit surprised at Paul’s candour. “Just feels like I’m off me nut. I’ve never caught a break like you have.”

“Yeah, but the thing is, to my mind I don’t think I _did_ catch a break,” Paul said. “I worked hard at it and it seemed to pay off. You didn’t see Wings when we started off, our shitty bus and those university gigs. No one wanted to go see a Beatle without the other three. Well I dunno, maybe they did with you, but they didn’t with me. I was going out on a total limb.”

John’s tears had dried up. He sucked back a throatful of snot. “That’s not the way things felt.”

“I can’t read your mind. If this stuff worries you, then all you had to do was call,” Paul said, shifting himself. “If you want to know, I’ve kept my distance because it seems like no matter what I do, you resent me. It’s no fun to see your mate down on your luck and get blamed for it when you try to help.”

John sighed. “You’re not wrong about that,” he admitted. “It’s like I told you last night, I don’t like meself. When I see you or George and hear about how you’ve all carried on without me, it feels like I’m the weak link in the lot.”

“All I’ve wanted since the band broke up was to get back together with you. You know that, right?” Paul said, raising himself to an elbow and looking at John.

John looked back. His heart beat a rhythm of astonishment. “No.”

“It’s true.” Paul might have reeked of booze, but there was complete clarity in his voice. His fingers moved on John’s chest. “Every place I go, I think of you, every song I sing, I sing for you.” He fell quiet. “As it were and that.”

“Yeah, that’s occurred to me, like, but I always chalk it up to paranoia,” said John.

“I thought it was plain as day,” said Paul. He laughed. “I’m always afraid Linda’ll will find me out.”

John searched for his eyes. “You never said anything to her about—”

“No!” Paul said. “God, not in a million years.”

“I never told Yoko, either.”

Paul brought his finger up to his lower lip and toyed with it. “Really?”

“Believe it,” said John.

“That changes a lot,” said Paul. He yawned. John didn’t know what he meant, but didn’t ask.

“Which ones?” John said. “Which songs?”

Paul put his head on John’s shoulder and closed his eyes. ““Call Me Back Again.”” His voice sounded faraway.

“Which one’s that?”

“ _Ooh, I called your name, John, every night since then_ ,” Paul sang, soft and sleepy. “I even slip your name in when we do it live. Can’t believe you didn’t notice.”

John took ahold of the hand that was on his chest. “Which others?”

Paul smiled, chest rising and falling in a way that said sleep was not long off. “I added a few lines to Denny’s song on _Band on the Run_. At the end.”

“I don’t remember that one.” Paul’s hand twitched under his.

“ _You wanna turn your head away and someone’s thinking of you_ ,” Paul sang. John plumbed his mind for a memory of the song, but _Band on the Run_ LP was tied up with images of May’s face and the creamy nutmeg taste of Brandy Alexanders on his tongue. “ _I wish you’d see it’s only me, I love you_.”

Something inside of John cracked, like an iceberg cleaving from an ice shelf. He remembered rowing with Paul around the time of _Pepper_ (or was it the _White Album_?), how red-faced and shouting they’d been, and just to break the dreadful tension he tipped his specs down to the end of his nose and said, “It’s only me, Paul. I love you.”

The answer had been staring him in the face all along. He squeezed Paul’s hand and Paul sighed in response, a fluted, musical sound. He wanted Paul to tell him more, but the hand twitching against his told him that Paul was done for the night.

He lay awake for a long time after Paul, sniffing the remnants of his tears back as Paul snored against his shoulder. He didn’t know if he felt any better than he had when Paul had first turned up, but a stirring very like hope had blossomed in his chest. His lungs felt clearer.  

I wish you’d see

it’s only me

it’s only me

it's only me

I love you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Paul does "Call Me Back" live, I swear it sounds like he says, "I call your name, John ..." Maybe he's saying "child," I don't know. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbOCQf0hcOU


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been writing like mad the past 48 hours, making up for lost time. I won't promise anything because it's a surefire way to set yourself up for failure, but I think Chapter 13 should come a lot more quickly. 
> 
> And I do promise I'll get to all the lovely comments you've left me last time, just as soon as I've had dinner!

Oddly, when John opened his eyes the next morning against the thin light filtering through the drapes, he felt like he’d been the one getting blotto the night before. His head hurt and his face felt puffy and tender. The room was suffused in a soft grey light. Soft voices came from the television, which had come back to life sometime early in the morning. He was lying shoulder to warm shoulder with Paul, who didn’t look as though he’d be waking up any time soon. At least two of the cats were meowing beyond the closed bedroom door, complaining that breakfast was late. He couldn’t see shit without his glasses, but squinting at the red blur that was the time on the alarm clock, he seemed to make it about half ten.

He scooted to the edge of the bed and grabbed his glasses off the bedside table. It was peculiar and a little unsettling that he hadn’t heard from Yoko in over 48 hours. Even after the fiercest row, she usually couldn’t wait to bustle back in and begin arranging the smallest of his movements again. He picked his dressing gown up from the carpet. In all probability, she was camped out at an expensive hotel on the Lennon credit card, making her business calls from a bed with white silk sheets while Helen took Sean for walks through the corridors and courtyards. His guts clenched as he thought of losing her. Of losing Sean. Of losing Paul.

Pulling his dressing gown onto his shoulders, he looked back at Paul. One of the pleasure of knocking boots with someone new was waking up to a face that you didn’t know like the back of your hand, thinking how fetching they looked and feeling pleased they’d gone to bed with you of all people. There was none of that mystery in Paul’s face, and yet he still liked looking at it. Not that he’d ever tell Paul that.

“Alright, you bastards,” he said in a mutter. He turned the TV off and opened the door. Misha and Sasha rushed in, crying loud enough to wake the dead.

Under the sheets, Paul shifted and sighed.

The calf’s liver was running low without Fred around to fetch more from the butcher’s and Uda to cook it. He rationed it out and set the bowls down. Someone like Paul would have no problem rolling up his sleeves and walking into the nearest greengrocer for more provisions, but the thought of all those eyes potentially upon him and all the pleas for autographs made John even more resolved to stay put where it was safe and familiar. Good King John was helpless in more ways than one.

He set the kettle to boil and returned to the bedroom.

“Up, you lazy sack of bones,” he said, leaning over and tweaking Paul’s nose, which was pointed at the ceiling.

“Ow!” Paul said, scrunching up his face, his arm striking out. “Bugger off, you prick,” he said. He groaned and rubbed his forehead with steepled fingers. “Have some respect for the dead, okay?” Then he closed his eyes and sighed, his head falling back on the pillow. “Bloody hell.”

“Kettle’s on,” said John.

“You feeling any better today?” Paul said, opening one eye and looking at him.

“That’s a funny question from someone so rat-arsed he went to bed in his clothes last night,” John said. He must have touched Paul at some point during the night, because he’d been surprised to feel denim against his fingers.

Paul, his button-up shirt cuffed at the elbows, gave him the two-finger salute. “I feel fine,” he said. Completely unconvincing.

“You were drunk as a boiled owl,” said John. “I can still smell it on you.”

“Yeah, well,” said Paul, yawning, “you made me.”

The connotation of the offhand comment wasn’t lost on John. He pretended not to have heard it, because it sounded confusingly enough like a flirtation.

“What’s on today?” said Paul. He folded his hands behind his head. His hair was limp and mussed. John felt like a fool staring down on him, so he sat on the edge of the bed next to Paul’s feet. Paul stunk like sweat, garlic, and booze long-swallowed.

“Same as was on yesterday,” said John, bobbing his foot and wishing he’d lit a ciggie before coming into the room.

“There’s a new flick out, I saw. _Star Trek: The Motion Picture_ or something. It’s not in the cinemas at home yet,” said Paul.

John had to laugh. He’d seen the show a couple times, but it was no good if you weren’t high as a kite. Paul loved it. His impulse was to say no off the bat, but he held back. Maybe Paul would just forget it.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Would you have oatmeal if I made it?”

“What sort?” said Paul.

“What sort?” said John. “I don’t know, it’s fucking oatmeal. I’ve got bananas if you want them. Do you want bananas?"

“That’s fine,” Paul said. “I’ll have a cup of tea as well.”

“You’ll come out to the kitchen for it, your lordship,” said John, shaking his head at him.

“Come here,” said Paul, beckoning him with a finger, arms still folded about his head.

“What?” John said.

“Just come here," he said, urgency in his voice. “You have to see this.”

John stood up and approached him. “See what?” he said, bending slightly and scanning the bedclothes.

Paul grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged his face down, kissing him close-mouthed but hard. “It’s good to see you,” he said, releasing John and kicking his legs over the side of the bed.

John took a pace backward, trying to look unruffled. Paul was definitely flirting and it was peculiar to be the recipient. He knew Paul’s tricks almost as well as he knew his own, but they worked on him nevertheless.

“That was a rubbish line,” he said.

“They don’t have to win a Nobel Prize, they’ve just go to work,” Paul said, tipping him a wink. “And it did. I’m off to have a wash.”

He sauntered out of the room, whistling, before John had half a chance to take him down a couple pegs.

“Cheeky fucker,” John said, swiping his thumb across his lower lip.

In the kitchen he filled a saucepan with water and set it on the hob. The kettle was boiling by now and he poured two cups of tea, one for Paul and one for him. He did feel different this morning, but how much of that was Paul’s presence and how much of that was unburdening himself in bed last night, he couldn’t say. Without Yoko’s daily updates, he was in the dark about whether Mercury was retrograde in Sagittarius and if Mars was transiting Aquarius, and what the fuck it all meant for his cosmic health and if the numbers were good or bad. And yet he felt lighter mentally.

While he waited for the tea to steep and the water to boil, he made his way to the front door to pick up the papers. They were sitting in a small pile outside the door and he took them in under his arm. He spread the front page of the _Times_ on the worktop. There was a fat lot of nothing in the headlines—some nonsense about food labels, more about the Iranian hostages, a photo of shoppers in the snow clutching parcels and brollies—but nobody important had died, no one had blown up the Rockefeller Center, and the streets below his windows were still noisy and busy.

He tried not to let his mind wander back to the kiss, but with nothing of substance in the paper it was almost impossible. He measured out a couple hundred grams of oats. Far too much, but then again Paul did eat like a horse.

They’d gotten off on the wrong foot this visit, even worse than usual, and he assumed Paul wanted nothing to do with him where matters of the flesh were concerned. He dumped the oats into the boiling water. Sleeping with Paul last night had been a bit unusual to be sure, but all John had sensed from him was drunken friendliness and sentimentality. They certainly hadn’t woken up in each other’s arms making passionate declarations.

He was attracted to Paul, no question about that. He’d admitted it to himself years before he'd ever admitted it to Paul, and regardless of what it made him, liking another guy, it didn't bother him as it had in the sixties. He’d made peace with that part of himself. What got under his skin was the uncertainty it brought up. He couldn’t treat Paul like some girl he met at a party. It would be utterly weird to try the normal techniques of seduction out on him. Paul could see right through it. It wasn’t like they could say something as familiar and casual as “fancy a shag?” either. The only thing that would have been more awkward would be trying to seduce George or Ringo. In occasions past, John had been so hungry for it that he’d simply led Paul into another room, locked the door, and dove in, hoping Paul would be game. There hadn’t been time to dredge up bitter feelings and unpleasant histories.

Furthermore, he was randy as all get-out these days, which didn’t help matters. With Yoko not putting out, the only time he got any satisfaction was during sleep, when a buffet of girls lined themselves up for him, white, black, Filipino, Indian, short, tall, fat, and thin. There wasn't any need to seduce dream girls that you’d magicked into existence yourself. They did everything you wanted at the pace you needed, no words necessary. At this rate, he’d have settled for a wank with the December issue of _Penthouse_ , but finding a moment to steal away with Paul in the place was probably not going to happen.

He tossed the spent teabags into the bin and gave Misha, who had come to investigate the smell of oatmeal, a few pats. A sigh escaped him. Here he was, another day of wondering what the fuck he was still doing on this planet and why he’d ended up a recluse without a song to his name. He sprinkled a bit of salt into the saucepan and stirred the simmering oatmeal.

Paul’s whistling preceded him. He walked into the kitchen wearing a towel around his middle, hair half-wet and lank.

“Cuppa tea, cuppa tea,” he said. “Got one handy?” He strode up behind John.

“What's happened to the hangover?” said John, stiffening at Paul’s unexpected appearance.

“What hangover?” said Paul, then he spotted the tea. “Ah,” he said, reaching for one of the mugs and taking a sip. “Cheers.” He disappeared from the kitchen as abruptly as he’d appeared, singing words that John didn’t catch and whistling.

“Silly cunt,” John said to Misha. He stirred the thickening oatmeal and swallowed some tea, too distracted to realise it lacked milk.

When Paul reappeared, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, John had carved up two bananas on a chopping board and laid the board alongside small bowls of raisins and dried blueberries. Into the oatmeal, he’d mixed a slim drizzle of honey. “Have at it,” he said, leaning against the opposite worktop.

“Looks great,” Paul said, spooning heaps of oatmeal into the bowl that John had set out. His portion was over-large, as John had predicted. “Would you believe,” he said, dressing his oatmeal with bananas and raisins, and drowning it with soya milk and honey, “that I don't know how to cook oatmeal? Linda spoils me. I can phone out for takeaway, but that’s about the limit.”

“Living with Mike and Jim all those years never taught you anything, eh?” said John.

“Hah!” said Paul “I could burn bacon and make toast. That was enough for them. God, I miss the old man sometimes.”

John, whose thoughts of the dear departed Freddie Lennon were largely unkind, didn’t know what to say to that.

Not seeming to notice, Paul sat down at the table and dove into his oatmeal like a famished man. John ladled a much smaller portion of oatmeal into his own bowl and topped it with some raisins and banana. They were quiet for a few minutes as they ate. When Paul was finished, he pushed his bowl aside and reclined back in his chair, locking his arms behind his head.

“That was marvellous,” he said.

John lifted a shoulder and dropped it, shrugging. He took the final bite of his own oatmeal.

Paul glanced around. “Where do you hide your piano, anyway?” he said.

“Why?” said John.

An expression of guilt cross Paul’s face. “Just wondering. I’m thinking of working on that song.”

“I’ll show you in a mo,” John said, suppressing the urge to tease Paul about his constant compulsion to be writing. He swallowed the rest of his tea.

“I know you wonder why I do it,” Paul said, looking him direct in the face. His expression, though, was calm.

“What, the song-and-dance-man bit?” John said.

“If that’s what you wanna call it,” said Paul. “Do you know, I nearly drank myself to death after the band split up.”

John had never heard this before. He turned his empty mug in his hands.

“What was I gonna do without music, you know? There was no other purpose to my life. I couldn’t see a way to do it without the rest of you,” Paul said, then caught himself. “Well, mostly you. So I took to the drink. I was a bloody mess. I’d get up at three in the afternoon, drink some more, back to bed. Rinse, repeat. It was a nightmare land. There’s poor Linda with the baby—Mary’s just been born—having to cope with the likes of a husband who won’t get out of bed and is pissed out of his head all the time. Not very glamourous, being married to a Beatle! The poor lass. And to my mind, you were doing just fine without me.” A serious expression had crept over Paul’s face.

“News to me,” said John. But he was very interested now.

“There was this one night that I almost lost it. I was lying face-down on the pillow and I just thought, ‘ _This is it. If I don’t turn over right now, I’m gonna lie here and suffocate and that’ll be the end_. _This’ll be the way that I go_.’ It sounds utterly mad, doesn’t it? I'm telling you, it took all my willpower just to turn right-side up again. And it was, ‘ _Phew, that was a close one_.’ So I got up the next afternoon and did some recording. I don’t—” He paused, his throat working. “I don’t ever want to be back there again. You know?”

“You could have fooled me,” said John. “I mean, that’s the way it looked, anyhow. You moved on like it was nothing.”

Paul laughed, short and scornful. “What, was I not supposed to move on? You’d rather I just have stayed in bed and drank myself to death? Don’t forget, it wasn’t me who gave up on the band. I didn’t ask for a divorce, that was you. I’m not the one who kicked you to the kerb.”  

“I’m not a bloody mind-reader. Any road, it is what it is. Water under the bridge,” John said. He reached over and patted Paul’s hand. “Poor old Paulie,” he said in an overdone accent, making a funny face and hoping Paul would laugh. “It all turned out right in the end, son.”

Paul gave a wry smile. John let his hand rest on top of Paul’s.

“We were kids,” Paul said. “I guess.”

“Cheer up. It’s my turn with the curse now,” John said. “It’s year four now and I’m okay, aren’t I?”

That did make Paul laugh. “No comment.”

John took his hand away and stood up. “The Americans say, ‘Plead the fifth.’”

“What’s that mean?”

“Summat to do with their Constitution or some shite,” said John. He cocked his chin. “C’mon, let’s get you to your pianny.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Updating bright and early this morning.
> 
> I can feel the story reaching some sort of conclusion at last, though I promise there will be at least three more chapters before it's over. I read Savageandwise's "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"* for sleeprettydarling and was inspired to weave some playful smoking scenes into the chapter. 
> 
> (Is there anything more difficult to write than a sex scene or am I the only one who tears my hair out over them?)
> 
> UPDATE: In attempting to see if I could tag Savageandwise, I inadvertently added her as a co-author and now I can't remove her. Sorry for the misattribution! I'm embarrassed now. I'm going to go have some tea. 
> 
> *I am the worst comment-leaver on earth. I will get to it someday. Promise!

It had been weeks since John had set foot in the room that housed the Yamaha, Wurlitzer, and other musical odds and ends. The better equipment was in their apartment next door, but he wasn’t about to go to the trouble of taking Paul over there. He drew the heavy, dusty curtains aside. Paul followed him, stepped out of the room briefly, and returned holding his guitar. He laid it to one side and sat down at the piano, testing a few notes.

“Could use a tuning,” he said, turning back to John.

“Yer head could use a tuning,” said John, lighting a cigarette.

Paul played a couple scales, then launched into a melody that took John a few seconds to identify. It was “Wonderful Christmastime.”

“Oh Jesus,” John said. “ _Paul_.”

Paul stopped playing and grinned. He turned his palms up, all innocence. “Sorry, fingers slipped.”

John cuffed him upside the head.

“Hey!” Paul said, rubbing his head, though John’s hand had barely made contact.

John sat down on the piano bench, shoving Paul’s knee to get him to make room. “So what’s our wunderkind got in mind?”

“I hear the song starting out with piano. Da-da, da-da. Da-da, da-da,” said Paul, demonstrating with one hand. He played a few bars, then sang, “ _Laugh when your eyes are burning. Smile when your heart is filled with pain_.” He brought the piano back in with: “ _Sigh as you brush away your tears_ …”

John, who’d sat next door at the white Steinway for weeks fretting over “Don’t Be Crazy” and getting nowhere, shook his head. It had taken Paul just 24 hours to create a song that was more or less ready to be recorded.

“It sounds nice,” he said, and because he couldn’t resist, “bloody sight better than ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Wonderful Christmastime’ or whatever you call it.”

In reply, Paul plucked the cigarette out of John’s mouth and put it in his own, humming over a series of resounding piano chords and plunging into the second verse. “ _You know the wheels keep turning. Why do the tears run down like rain_?”

“I don’t care,” John said. “I’d rather leave ‘em to somebody else. The wheels.”

Paul gave him a look, but continued playing. Listening to Paul compose filled John with a trace of the feeling he used to get when they’d write together: at Weybridge, at EMI, in a plane above the Atlantic, knowing they were booked at the studio the following week and had a quota of songs to fulfil. Bringing that new piece of music into existence was a buzz like nothing else in the world. He’d been chasing the feeling for so long now, wishing for it to seize him again, that he wasn’t sure anymore why he wanted it. Was it for its own sake? Or was it because he was supposed to want it because he was supposed to be a musician above anything else, and musicians were supposed to write and record? All his life he’d been fighting back against the supposed-tos. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that his favourite memories of music came from the days when he wasn’t supposed to be doing it.       

“ _It’s too much for anyone, too hard for anyone. Who wants a happy and peaceful life? You’ve gotta learn to laugh_ ,” sang Paul, holding the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

As he heard the bridge, it hit John that the words really were meant for Good for Nothing Lennon; Paul hadn’t just been fooling and flattering when John had asked if the song was personal. He let his gaze linger on Paul, who was watching his fingers as they danced over the keys. He was as good-looking as he’d ever been, ol’ cock of the walk.

An impulse made him grab the cigarette out from between Paul’s lips, partly because he needed the nicotine and it had been his ciggie to begin with, partly just to be close to him. When he’d been with May, touching Paul had come so easy. He’d loop an arm around Paul’s shoulders or lean in close for a long hug, not giving it a second thought. Of course, that was before he’d forced a conversation that Paul didn’t want to have in a dark hotel room on the Upper West Side three years ago, upending all notions of what was rational and what wasn’t with their relationship.

While he didn’t have anything to add to Paul’s song, it didn’t stop him thinking about what it would be like to write with him again. During most of the Beatles days, there was at least the illusion they were equals and they could collaborate without friction. He reckoned it would be difficult to swallow back his resentment and jealousy now, though, since Paul’s successes had long since outstripped his.

“ _Smile, when you’re spinning round and round. Sigh as you think about tomorrow_

 _Make a vow that you’re gonna be happy again_ ...” Paul ended the song rather cleverly, merging the chorus and the bridge to end on an ambiguous note: " _You’ve got to learn to laugh_."

“Whaddya think?” he said, looking sideways at John.

“Another number-one hit,” John said in his driest voice, taking a long drag of the cigarette. “As usual.”

“What, is there something the matter with it?” said Paul.

John sighed. “No, it's perfectly alright. It’s just—”

“What?”

John groped for the ashtray atop the board of the piano. He stubbed out the cigarette before answering. “It’s just, how many times can I tell you it’s the most stupendous thing I’ve ever heard? You know it’s damn good. They usually are, aren’t they? Nine times out of ten, at any rate.”

“I don’t get tired of hearing it,” Paul said, his voice quiet.

“I’m touched, I am, Paul,” said John, well aware that the words sounded unconvincing and more than half-sarcastic. “Let’s face it, though. It’s a bit like asking a fellow with one leg how you did in the footrace you run every week, isn’t it?”

“Nothing wrong with your legs,” Paul said. He brushed the side of his nose with a finger, his eternal nervous habit. “We could try writing again, if you fancy it. I could get you started off—and that.”

John let the proposition sink in, searching for the right words. “I’m not saying no or never,” he said after a pause. He looked at Paul. “I want to do it meself first, though. Just to prove it’s not all you. I mean, that it wasn’t all you. ‘Cos sometimes I wonder, you know? Would I have just given up on music after _Help!_ without you around? I don’t know.”

Paul’s contorted features suggested that John had just revealed himself to be a chronic syphilitic.

“What?” said John, as Paul looked away.

“Right, because I crept off to Spain for six weeks and wrote ‘Strawberry Fields’ right under your nose, did I?” said Paul, laughing. “And while you were off in the toilet, I did ‘Come Together.’ And after that—”

“I get the picture, but you know goddamn well what I mean,” John said. He put his hand into his dressing gown and fumbled for the cigarettes in his pyjama shirt.

“Not really,” Paul said, sounding on the verge of annoyed. “You’re a fucking genius and you know it.”

“Was a fucking genius,” John said, pulling a cigarette from the pack and replacing it in his shirt.

“Oh, c’mon. That’s crap,” said Paul. “You sound like Heather. You know: a _teenager_.” He stretched out his hand, rummaging inside John’s dressing gown before John could protest.

“Just what on earth are you doing?” said John, as Paul seized the pack of cigarettes.

“Helping myself to a ciggie, it looks like,” said Paul, impudent, with the cigarettes now in his palm.

“Well stop, because you’re behaving like a flirt and it’s driving me up a wall,” said John, irritated.

Paul slid a cigarette between his lips. “Can’t it be both?”

“So you are trying it on then,” John said. He narrowed his eyes.

“No,” said Paul.

“Yes,” said John.

“Okay, yes,” Paul said. “Got a light?”

“No,” said John, yanking the cigarette from Paul’s saucy lips and kissing him. His eyes fluttered closed, but not before he saw Paul’s eyebrows arch. The feeling of Paul’s mouth against his trickled down to his toes like molten caramel. His heart pounded his hope: don’t-say-no, say-yes; don’t-say-no, say-yes. He could never be absolutely sure if Paul really wanted this.

He nudged against Paul’s mouth harder. Then Paul’s lips opened up against his and pushed back. John’s pulse quickened. Paul’s tongue met his, withdrew for a few moments, stayed. John groaned at the taste of him. He slipped his hand over the back of Paul’s neck and pulled him closer. If they could just do this for the rest of the day, John would not raise a further complaint.

It didn’t take more than a minute for John’s blood to warm from all the kisses. He felt heavy and stupid with desire. He wanted Paul down on his knees, on his back—however. His other hand, still with Paul’s unsmoked cigarette threaded between two fingers, plucked at the neck of Paul’s T-shirt as he thought of all the ways he wanted Paul. He had to battle the desire to not to undress him right there. For Paul, this was probably nothing. He had a normal marriage to a normal wife, no doubt enjoyed a nice shag every other night of the week, but John hadn’t had a good lay in months. His throat thickened with saliva just thinking about it.

Slowly, slowly, Paul’s fingers closed around his—and stole back the cigarette. He broke off their kiss. John pressed forward, needy.

“Half a moment,” said Paul. John was gratified to hear that his breathing had quickened. “I haven’t had a ciggie today and my head is seriously doing me in.”

“Jesus Paul, really?” John said. He nuzzled Paul’s neck, wanting more.

“What’s the rush, got a bus to catch?” Paul said, mouth quirking.

“D’ya not want to then?” John said, humiliation and anger doubling up on him like a wave.  

Paul’s eyes were soft. “That isn’t what I said. Sometimes a ciggie is just a ciggie. Alright?”

John said nothing.

“Anyway, you took me a bit by surprise. I didn’t think you wanted to do _that_ again," said Paul. “Until just now.”

“Bit hard to when you’re away for 16 months,” said John. He dropped a kiss on the side of Paul's neck, and Paul made a small muffled noise.

“Sure you don’t want to wait until later? Like—for the main event and stuff,” Paul said, getting red.

“Paul,” said John, giving him a fed-up sigh. “I’ve got the endurance of a stallion. I can go at for the rest of the bloody day. Into tomorrow, if you really want.”

“Uh, well,” Paul said, biting his lip and looking sheepish, “I can’t. I don’t. That is, how about …” He hesitated. “What say I do you and have my ciggie, and we’ll go at it again a bit later. How’s that?"

“You’re not just fobbing me off ‘cos you don’t want to, right?” John said, guarded.

Paul swung his leg over the piano bench and stood up. He gestured to his blue jeans, which were rather disturbed in the crotch area. “Yes, I’m completely having you on as you can see,” he said, dry.

John licked his lips and got up. “Third door on your right,” he said, as Paul disappeared through the doorway.

“I know where my kit is, thanks,” Paul said.

John caught up to him and whacked him on the arse for his cheek, surprised when he encountered the contours of Paul’s cigarette pack in his back pocket.

“You cheeky sod!” John said.

Paul laughed, dancing away. “You told me not to use any more lines.”

“You could do with some practice,” John said, trailing him back into the guest bedroom. “With your technique.”

“Haven’t been on the pull in a few years, have I?” Paul said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Bit rusty.”

John had lost track of the times he’d been unfaithful outside his own marriage and declined to answer. He hovered in the centre of the room, waiting for a signal.

“Come on then,” Paul said. He lit the cigarette he’d purloined from John. His face was open and relaxed as he took a drag, eyes locked with John’s.

John placed his hand on the tie of his dressing gown, and at that precise instant the telephone rang.

“You’ve got to be joking,” he said, heart bouncing into his throat

The phone rang a second time. Yoko.

“You may as well get it,” said Paul.

John charged into his bedroom. It was like the woman had a sixth sense. Or maybe she’d bugged the place; he wouldn’t put it past her. He leaned across the bed and grabbed the receiver from the telephone mounted above the headboard.

“Yes?” he said. He wasn’t slightly inclined to disguise his wrath.

“It’s just me,” said the meek voice of Fred on the other end of the line.

“What?” he said, doubly angry to hear that it wasn’t Yoko. “What the fuck is it, man? I’m busy here.”

“Yoko wanted me to tell you that we’re in Palm Beach, her and Helen and Sean and me,” said Fred, who sounded as though he would prefer not to be having the conversation.

“And?” said John. “What the fuck does she want with me?”

As Fred stammered out an answer about Yoko needing him to join them by Monday and the best direction from which to set out, John put his hand between his legs and massaged himself. He had a massive throbber and the interruption had only increased his discomfort.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “If she has anything to say to me, she can fuckin’ call me tomorrow morning. I don’t want the fucking phone ringing off the hook the rest of the day. Clear? Jesus Christ.”

Fred, submissive, said that he understood and ended the call.

“Christ on a crutch,” said John, running his hand through his hair. It was infuriating enough for Yoko to be poking her nose back into his affairs, but the fact that she was using Fred as a sacrificial lamb took the biscuit. He took a breath to compose himself and returned to the guest room, closing the door behind him to keep out any inquisitive cats.

Paul was lying on the bed looking at the ceiling, his coveted ciggie smoked halfway down. “Something the matter?” he said, looking to John.

“No,” said John. “Not important.” He carded a hand through his hair again, not sure where to pick up. The spontaneity of the scene had crumbled in his brief absence.

Paul inclined his head, indicating the empty half of the bed. For a moment, John considered calling it off. He didn’t want it if Paul didn’t want it, he wasn’t sure Paul wanted it, he didn’t want to be at the mercy of Paul in yet another situation. In the end it was his treacherous prick that did him in, lured into rebellion by the picture of Paul lying there in his black T-shirt and blue jeans. He stepped to the other side of the bed and arranged himself among the disheveled bedclothes.

“It’s not a funeral, John,” Paul said, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. He blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling, lips rounded.

“You’ve got to find some better lines,” said John, slipping down his pyjama trousers. “‘ _I’ve never wanted anyone like this’_ ; ‘ _bend over you naughty lad’_ ; you know, sensible stuff.” His heart pulsed faster and he feigned like he didn’t feel absurd and embarrassed, his cock hanging out and Paul fully clothed and in control of the next several minutes.

Paul laughed and crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. “Yours could do with some work as well,” he said, and lit another cigarette. He placed it between his lips and wriggled closer, warm in the chill of the room. Without a further word, he stroked John.

The touch warmed John through like a dram of Scotch and carried him blissfully away. He shut his eyes. He knew it was just endorphins, but a feeling not unlike love spread throughout his body. He was glad to be in New York City, glad to be with Paul, glad it was Christmastime, grateful to be alive. Goose pimples stippled his arms as Paul worked out a rhythm. Obviously Paul was still okay with this, which was a welcome revelation. It made their past trysts seem more reciprocal and less like something John  had pressured him into.

Paul’s fingers ghosted down and cupped him for a brief second. If the world could see this now, the Best Singer-Songwriter of All Fucking Time giving a hand shandy to the Biggest Wash-Up of the Seventies! It gave John a sense of pleasure quite separate from their current activity. He sighed in his throat and Paul sped up the pace. The circumstances were almost enough to distract him from thoughts of Yoko in Palm Beach, undoubtedly holed up in the house while Fred and Helen took Sean to the seaside to scoop holes in the sand and splash in the waves. He realised she’d been dropping hints about the trip for weeks, but confronting her would be an exercise in pointlessness. She’d just chalk the decision up to her coterie of fucking psychics. He’d wanted to stay in New York for Christmas, which Sean was at last old enough to understand. But Mother always knew best.

Paul tightened his hand, reminding John that now was not the time and place to be thinking about family. He pushed down the hysterical giggle that was bubbling up inside him and opened his eyes. Paul’s head was turned to the side on a mound of pillows and he had his fingers to his lips, removing his cigarette at unhurried intervals so he could release the smoke. His eyes were heavy. There wasn’t a trace of uncertainty in his expression. In fact, he looked as though he were enjoying himself.

John shivered when their eyes connected.

“Not bad,” he said, to lighten the air.

Paul smiled back. He took the cigarette from his mouth. “Shh,” he said. His elbow dug into the flesh of John’s upper arm as twisted his wrist.

John’s eyes flickered shut. He couldn’t watch the soundless motion of Paul jerking him or else he was sure to lose it. As it was, it was almost too much and he squirmed, that familiar dense heat creeping over every inch of his skin. Was it autumn when Yoko had last done this or summer? He didn’t remember, but her complaints were still fresh in his head: the bedroom was too hot, Sean would hear, she had to get up at 5 a.m. for work, and so on. The excuses had been expanding yearly since they’d conceived Sean. Lately she’d been hinting that it was the menopause, and he suspected she’d drag the line out for the next ten years, after which she was sure to move the topic to her brittle bones and incontinence.

His knees tensed up, making him forget Yoko. Paul had gotten him to the brink in less than three minutes flat. He wasn’t sure whether to chalk that up to Yoko’s recent frigidity or Paul’s level of skill. A giggle rose in him again at the utter madness of the predicament, not being able to keep his mind on Paul and off Yoko in spite all the hours he’d spent fantasising about having Paul alone.

“Paul,” he said. The muscles in his stomach twitched.

“I know,” Paul said, moving his hand faster.

The climax punched the wind out of John. Scarcely aware of it, he canted his hips toward the ceiling and grabbed Paul by the thigh as he came. His eyes opened in time to see himself spilling all over Paul’s hand. The sight of his come on Paul’s wedding ring and wrist was nearly as good as the orgasm itself.  

He moaned and threw himself back into his pillow. The come-down descended on him like dose of opiates and he breathed deeply, savouring the feeling. Paul released him and grappled for a moment on the bedside table. John opened his eyes again. Paul was attempting to clean his hand with a small fistful of tissues.

“Sorry there,” John said, not in the least bit.

“That was quite a display,” Paul said, dabbing at his palm with the tissues. “Tell me, have you had a wank since man walked on the moon?”

In retaliation, John slid his hand up Paul’s thigh and between Paul’s legs.

Paul produced the smallest of gasps. “Hey,” he said. John smiled and closed his hand around Paul’s erection. Paul’s lips fell open and his eyelids trembled as they shut. John squeezed, and Paul bucked into his touch. “This isn’t fair,” he said.

“Sorry?” said John.

“I won't be able to go at it again tonight if you keep that up,” Paul said, writhing ever so delicately.

With some measure of regret, John let go of him. “Pass me a tissue, eh?” he said, and Paul obliged. He cleaned himself up as best he was able, then pulled the rest of his clothes off. He stood and stretched, naked. When he hazarded a glance at Paul to see what sort of reaction he’d provoked, Paul had sat up and was averting his eyes. A blush had crept onto his throat, just above the collar of his T-shirt.

“We’ve got time to make the matinee of your film,” he said, crossing in front of the foot of the bed.

Paul looked up from where he’d been fiddling with the cuffs of his jeans. John noticed that he was careful to keep his eyes above John’s waistline. “Oh?” he said.

“If you still wanna see it, yeah,” John said.

“‘Course I wanna see it,” Paul said.

“Gimme a second to get me clothes on,” he said.

He opened the vast walk-in wardrobe in his bedroom and regarded his choices. He’d bought a mail-order taupe suit that summer which had recently arrived back from the tailor and was keen to try it out, but with Paul in casual attire it wouldn’t work. Also, there was the dirty slush to think of. He wavered between a collared polyester shirt, maroon with swans printed on it, and a collared polyester shirt, navy blue with Grecian urns printed on it. As he struggled to make a decision, he concluded that maybe a T-shirt with a jacket would do better. He tried on a few shirts and cast them to the bottom of the wardrobe when they didn’t yield the look he was going for. He was standing in front of his mirror in a maroon jacket and a white T-shirt with a sketch of Willie Nelson’s face on it when Paul walked in.

“Bloody hell, man, put some fucking trousers on, will you?” Paul said, raising a hand to the side of his face to shield himself.

John snickered. “Nothing you haven’t seen a billion times before.”

“Quite a few less than that, actually,” Paul said. He’d put on a canary-yellow pullover over his tee.

“Keep your knickers on,” John said, fishing a pair of jocks out of his smaller wardrobe and stepping into them. He completed the ensemble with jeans, hoping that Paul knew what a sacrifice it was to wear the first pair he happened across in the drawer. Now for that hats.

“This one,” Paul said, grabbing a herringbone newsboy cap and popping it onto John’s head.

“No, you don’t wear tweed with velvet,” John said, holding out the sleeve of his jacket to demonstrate.

“We’re going to be late,” said Paul. He withdrew the cap and put it on his own head.

“Even worse,” said John, giving him a grin.

“The wool one then,” Paul said, picking out a black one and handing it to him. “Trust me. You’d look better in a Wings T-shirt, though.”

John knuckled him in the ribs.

“Hey, ouch!” he said, hopping away. He was smiling, though. “Can we go now?”

“Alright,” John said, taking one final look at himself in the mirror. “Let’s go see your ruddy spacemen film.”

Paul’s smile was euphoric.


	14. Chapter 14

Okay. Very much not an update and sorry to disappoint if you're waiting with bated breath. But I'm mostly done with Chapter 14 so this will have to serve as a placeholder until I'm done with the sodding thing. Which should be soon!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this installation, John and Paul eat sushi, listen to "Fear of Music," and roll around in bed. Enjoy.

Six o’clock found them back at the Dakota eating takeaway sushi—Paul opting for avocado and cucumber rolls—and listening to yet more songs of Paul’s, which he’d churned out over the summer. They were sat on his and Yoko’s bed, the speakers on either side pulsing with funny keyboard sounds, odd time signatures, electronic percussion, and choruses of Paul’s voice. John was relieved to have one of Paul’s potent joints on board because the songs kept coming, one after the other. Paul lounged on John’s side of the bed, reaching up to the mantel every so often to adjust the knobs on the tape deck. Despite John’s offer of chopsticks, he was eating the sushi with his fingers, dunking the pieces in soya sauce before popping them into his mouth. It more than slightly bothered John, whose Japanese dining etiquette was flawless thanks to Yoko’s stern coaching.

“I’ve been listening to lots of John Cage and Talking Heads,” Paul had said, before putting the tape on.

That’s where John’s annoyance had started. Cage was Yoko’s scene more than Paul’s; he’d been her teacher after all. Trust McCartney to encroach upon her territory. Also, for as much as he tried keeping up with the charts he’d never heard of the Talking Heads. They sounded good and he was nettled that Paul had beaten him to them.

Despite any lofty inspiration, Paul’s new songs weren’t fantastic. Mostly they just amounted to artistic masturbation, discordant in ways that didn’t quite jive. John hadn’t had a hit song in donkey’s years, but he still felt sure he could experiment Paul out of the water when it came to stuff like this.

“What do you think?” said Paul, as one particularly weird track with a swing beat and out-of-sync vocals ended.

“It’s alright,” said John. “Sort of rough around the edges.” It was the most merciful commentary he could muster.

“I thought it sounded fine,” Paul said. He looked hurt.

“I didn’t say I hated it or nothin’, it just needs polishing, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” said Paul. John could sense his ego flaring, as it had done so many times in the Beatles days when anyone dared challenge him in the studio.

“Yes,” said John. “Don’t let this come as a shock, but not everything you touch turns to gold.”

“Is it possible not to take that the wrong way?” Paul said. Definitely offended now.

“I don’t know what your yes-men tell you, I’m just telling you what I hear,” John said. On a whim, because they could do this now, he kissed Paul, tasting soya sauce on his lips like brine from the ocean.

Paul didn’t kiss back. He switched off the tape, pulled it out, and flicked it across the room like a skipping stone. Part of his lower lip had vanished under a front tooth.

“Don’t be such a prince,” John said, leaning back into Yoko’s pillow. He would have started to feel overstrung at the start of their umpteenth argument in as many days, but Paul’s magic weed had him in its grasp. “It’s alright, but I’m not gonna fall to me knees and kiss your fucking ring or summat just because you’ve crapped out a few more tunes.”

Paul continued to pout, biting his lip.

“Jesus, are we doing this again?” John said. He got up and turned on the telly.

Marie Osmond was sitting next to a frosty window on a soundstage, moaning her way through “Blue Christmas” while Dorothy Hamill twirled and sashayed across a frozen pond outside the window. It was a miserable rendition of a miserable song.

They watched in restless silence until the song was over and the show cut to advertisements. Next to the sentimental Osmonds, Paul’s self-indulgent experiments sounded like Schubert.

“You could be making music like that lot, I guess,” said John. He signed. “Try seeing it from my point of view. I ain’t had a hit of me own since 1974. Donny Fucking Osmond could probably write a number one better than me. So who gives a damn what I think?”

“Now who’s asking stupid questions?” Paul said.

“Here we go,” John said.

Paul lit a cigarette, the tip flaring orange in the dim light as he took the first drag. “I care ‘cos it’s your opinion that matters.”

“If that’s the way you feel, then you need your head seen to,” John said. To some degree he was flattered, but just as equally he was baffled. He couldn’t seem to find a way to get across to Paul that the John he thought he knew went away a long, long time ago. “Fancy listening to some records?” he said. He had to say something or this was going to go sour again.

Paul lifted a shoulder, a flat no if John had ever seen one.

“The well runneth dry, you’ve gotta understand,” said John. “I ain’t the genius I used to be. If I ever was one to begin with—and I’ve got me doubts.”

“You are to my mind,” Paul said, in a plain and honest way.

John had to laugh at that. Poor misguided Paul. “Any road, I did like the one that you had in the middle of the record. That one with all the funny sounds.”

“They’ve all got funny sounds,” said Paul.

John tried to recall the words. “It was the one that said something about a flower.”

“Oh, that one. Yeah, I did it over the summer. I just took a beat that I liked  and laid down some drums, then I kept adding different bits in like a layer cake. I used a vari-speed machine with my voice.”

“You did all the parts?” said John.

“Yeah, why?”

“It’s good isn’t it, that’s why you daft wanker!” said John. “What’s it called?”

“‘Coming Up,’” said Paul. “I was thinking of making it the single for the next LP.”

“Ah, see,” said John. “That’s what I’m on about. Your last record was, what was it, six months ago? What I’m saying is that you can take your time, you don’t have to rush it like there’s no tomorrow. You’re not going to lose it unless I’m contagious.”

Paul forced a smile and looked back at the telly.

Sensing the conversation was finished, John gathered up the Styrofoam containers the Japanese restaurant had served their food in and took them into the kitchen to bin them. The kitchen, normally a toasty place even in winter, was on the cold side, the stone tiles chilly under his sock feet. He’d fed the cats as soon as he and Paul had gotten in, but already the scheming little hairballs were swarming around his ankles yowling for more titbits.

“Shut yer gobs,” John said. He reached down and scratched Charo under his chin and the other two smashed their faces into his leg, marking him. Sometimes he’d give them a bit of milk in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep, but at half-nine that was a long way off. Their only real problem in life was that they were greedy buggers. “Must be nice,” he said, as they covered him with their affections.

He crouched and adjusted the knob on the radiator. That done, he crossed the room and peeked out the window into the courtyard below. It was still humped in white snow, mostly untouched, unlike the greyish sludge that now lined all the streets of Upper Manhattan. The shades of the windows opposite were drawn, a yellow glow coming from behind them.

“What do you see?” said Paul, who had just stepped into the room. John startled. Within moments, Paul was at his shoulder.

“Nothing in particular.” The cold radiated in from the outside; the closer John got to the window, the frostier it felt.

Paul leaned in closer, standing on his tip-toes and craning his head over John’s shoulder. “Oy,” John said, looking sideways at him. “What are you doing? Stop.” He turned around but that was a mistake, because now they were chest to chest and eye to eye. Evidently that was precisely what Paul had planned, because he brought his face to John’s and kissed him. This was no chaste kiss of a Paul caught off-guard, either: it had heat and intent behind it, and John stepped backward one pace, the low windowsill meeting the backs of his legs. Maybe the slagging—or more accurately, the perception that he'd been slagged off—had turned Paul on. Or that was his thought, anyway, until Paul’s fervour succeeded in distracting him wholly. Paul had wound his hand into the hair at the base of John’s neck and was gripping it hard enough to sting. His tongue licked across John’s lips.

“C’mon,” John said, breaking it off and putting his palms on Paul’s chest. He manoeuvred him back. “Don’t send me out the bloody window now.”

Paul’s eyes had a dangerous cast to them that John had only ever seen on rare occasions, mostly toward the last months of the band when he knew that Paul wanted more than anything to punch him until he bled. “Bedroom,” he said, angling his head. John nodded, not intending to put up any objections, and Paul followed him out of the kitchen.

John led them back into his room instead of the guest room, betting that in his current mood Paul wouldn’t complain. The idea of taking Paul on the bed he shared with his wife excited him dreadfully.

As soon as they crossed the threshold of the bedroom, Paul kicked the door closed, grabbed John by the shirt collars, and marched him over to the bed. He’d put on a record that John didn’t recognise, the pulsing electric sound not unlike the songs of his that he'd just played for John. John figured it was The Talking Heads. The volume was loud enough to blot out the sound of the traffic.

“You’re sure no one’s coming back tonight,” Paul said, still fisting either side of John’s collar.

John swallowed. “No. Told ya, Yoko’s in Florida and I’ve told the help to stay away.”

“Good.” Paul released John and pushed him, gentle, onto his back on the bed. His hands dropped to his belt buckle and John’s stomach flipped. He didn’t know what sort of ride he was being taken for, but all trace of coyness and innocence was gone from Paul.

Paul shed his yellow jumper, freeing one arm and pulling the jumper over his head and off the other arm. He got rid of his black T-shirt next in the same fashion. By the time his hands returned to his waist, belt-less now, John remembered himself. He had just undone the second button of his shirt when Paul leaned over and covered his hands with his.

“Wait,” he said.

There was something in Paul’s expression that would have alarmed him if he’d been a less reckless man. On previous occasions they’d fumbled through things together, equally inexperienced, but this was different. Paul was running the show this time. His heart raced as Paul pulled down his jeans and shorts in a single motion, bending his knees to remove them from his legs. He was not surprised to see that Paul was already in a state of pronounced arousal and it paralysed him with want. A groan erupted from deep within him as Paul put a bare knee between his spread legs, denting the mattress with his weight. His hands went to the sides of John’s shoulders. At last his open mouth met John’s again and John pressed his tongue in, unable to be delicate about it. His need overwhelmed him.

Paul’s knee between his legs was both arousing and weirdly threatening. John never expected he could feel so vulnerable with all his clothes on and all of Paul’s off. It wasn’t just the knee, either. Some kind of aura was pouring off of him, masculine and focused.

 _Drugs won't change you. Religion won't change you_ , went the music. _I haven't got the faintest idea. Everything seems to be up in the air at this time_.

John could relate to that. He wondered if Paul had put on the record as a message, then decided in the next moment that it didn’t matter. You could choose to take something as a message even if it wasn’t meant to be. The universe sent you gifts like that. Paul was unfastening the button of John’s trousers now, none of him yet making contact with John except for his mouth. A fire had started to kindle in John’s stomach. It was as if he hadn’t gotten off earlier. He hadn’t felt anything like this since the first few months with May: that sexual starvation mixed with the kind of intoxicating love you always feel at the start of a new relationship.

He knew that he loved Paul and also that he fancied Paul, but the idea of being _in love_ with Paul had never occurred.

“What are you doing to me?” John whispered. But it was a rhetorical question that Paul did not feel inclined to answer. He drew back, smiled, and pulled open John’s zipper. John looked down.

Paul’s erection bobbed there, inviting, and quite inappropriately the first joke he’d ever made about Paul’s penis sprang into his head. They’d only been kids, he couldn’t remember how old, and he’d never seen a circumcised bloke before. “Where’s its fookin’ hat,” he’d blurted, and Paul had gone a funny colour and told him to shove it. When Brian had come into their lives, John had naturally formulated a number of jokes concerning both Paul and their Jewish manager, but Paul didn’t see the humour in any of them. Even in those early days, before John had put two and two together, Paul exuded some kind of hold over him, and when Paul told him in no uncertain terms that the jokes had to stop, John stopped.

Paul’s hands tugged. In seconds John’s trousers were around his ankles.

While it was proving more and more difficult not to pull Paul closer and ravish him, the suspense was its own sort of pleasure. He settled for putting a hand on Paul’s head and brushing his fingers through Paul’s thick hair.

 _Science won’t change you. Looks like I can’t change you_ , went the music. _Try to talk to you to, to make things clear, but you're not even listening to me._

Paul spread his palms flat on John’s thighs. That was all normal until he raked his nails down them. John whimpered, and then instantly felt embarrassed that he was losing control already. Now hovering around his midsection, Paul caught his eye. John was the first to drop his eyes.

“I can’t take much more of this,” he said.

Paul smirked. “What do you want?” he said.

“Thought you had a plan,” said John, raising himself to his elbows.

“Nope, just teasing,” Paul said, with a full-toothed grin.

“Bloody Christ,” John said.

“How about this?” said Paul, applying his tongue to a place that make John grip the bedclothes quite involuntarily.

“More of that.”

“More of what?” said Paul, winking.

“Don’t make me fucking paste you, McCartney. Just keep your mouth where it is,” said John. He couldn’t remember how many nights this year he’d imagined those lips on him, but it was a lot. He groaned. He might not be Best Singer-Songwriter of All Fucking Time, but after almost three decades of practice he probably qualified for Wanking Champion of the Western Hemisphere—and that lent him a preternatural endurance. Paul was probably going to get tired before long, but for now he was happy to let Paul torture him. John could live on those sloppy sounds alone for months and not need anything else to satisfy him.

He put his hand back in Paul’s hair. He wanted to grab it by the roots, make Paul give it to him rough, but when you were handed a gift like this you didn’t want to mess it up. He couldn’t think of anyone else in the world who’d had the satisfaction of having those shapely lips around their cock. He groaned again.

“Mmm,” Paul said, echoing him. His voice was pitched low.

“Jesus fuck, that’s good,” said John. He was on fire all the way up to his eyeballs. He tossed his head back, experiencing every inch of it. “Shit.”

For several minutes, he mind lingered on an old chestnut of a fantasy he’d been polishing since their first night together. Well, their first night as man and man. It involved Paul taking him like a woman, although he knew in his heart that Paul would never go in for that: the alarm on Paul’s face the morning of his arrival when John had asked whether he ever thought about putting it in another man’s arse told him as much. Still, it was a cracker of a fantasy and letting it spool out while Paul sucked him threatened to upset the endurance he was so proud of.

Finally, Paul pulled off with a wet noise. “Can’t feel my lips anymore,” he groused. But he was smiling.

“C’mere,” John said.

He took Paul by the hand and pulled him on top of him, kissing him with a sudden fierceness. He couldn’t get close enough to Paul. He wanted to say something foolish like _I love you_ or _don’t leave please_ and maybe _let me fuck you_ , but he bit it back and settled for holding Paul to him and raining kisses all over his neck and cheek.

“Careful the papers don’t get wind of this, they’ll be calling you sentimental,” Paul said, tucking a piece of John’s hair behind his ear. He kissed John on the lips, closed mouth.

“Got anything in mind?” John said, needing to know.

“I’m getting to it,” Paul said. He smiled. “I’ve thought of one or two things.”

“Tell me what,” John said. His need was keen.

“I’ll show you instead,” Paul said. He looked down to where their hips met. The warm length of him was pressed into John’s skin, insistent. He lifted his hips and adjusted himself so that now his length was vertical with John’s. They were almost the same size; John thought he might be a little bit bigger, actually. Paul took both of them in hand at once and gave one thrust.

 _Find a city, find myself a city to live in_.

John gasped.

 _Lotta rich people, Birmingham_.

Paul thrust.

 _Lotta ghosts, lotta houses_.

He thrust a third time.

 _Look over there! Dry ice factory. Good place to get some thinking done_.

“Fuck,” said John, closing his eyes. He put his hands on either side of Paul’s ribs, feeling his muscles flex as he moved. Leave it to Paul to be absolutely amazing at something he’d never tried before.

Paul alternated, sometimes thrusting and sometimes wanking them at the same time. His precision was mind-blowing. A slickness built between them, though John wasn’t sure whether it was from him, Paul, or both of them.

“You’re a fucking dirty bugger,” John said.

“That a challenge?” said Paul, quickening the movements of his hand.

“Fuck me,” John said, not an oath but a request. He looked into Paul’s eyes to see how it had been received. Paul’s cheeks were pink, but he continued to grip both of them at once. Oh well. It had been worth a shot. “Harder,” said John instead, covering Paul’s hand with his own to demonstrate.

Paul’s nostrils flared and he moaned, high and delicate. “I can’t hold out much longer,” he said at a whisper.

John pushed his hips up and let them fall. “Harder.”

“Ah, shit,” Paul said, stroking harder. He came a few seconds later with a smothered cry. John waited for him to finish before he came himself, adding to the liberal mess on Paul’s hand.

“That’s the second time today you’ve had jism all over your hand,” said John, once his breathing was more regular. “You ought to be more careful.”

Paul leaned over and wiped his hand back and front on John’s shirt, which neither of them had removed. “How’s that for careful?” he said, face looming over John’s.

“You shit,” John said, unbuttoning himself. When he’d freed himself from the shirt, he seized Paul around the neck, catching him unawares, and flipped him onto his back.

“Hey!” Paul said, laughing as John pinned him.

John lowered his head to Paul’s chest. The dark hair met his cheek, soft. Paul’s heart beat under his ear. “Stay with me?” he said.

“Don’t I wish,” Paul said, his hand falling to John’s hair. “If you could behave this well all the time I might consider it.”

“What, you got something more important?” said John. The endorphins were really doing a number on him. It was stupid to have said anything out loud. He knew they were both thinking of Linda and Paul’s kids and his tours and houses and whatever else he used to fill his time that wasn’t John.

“Wish I could, love,” Paul said, stroking his head.

They had all the money and freedom of movement in the world, but they couldn’t have something as pure and as simple as this.

“If wishes were horses,” John said.

“Got enough of them already,” Paul said. “A whole stable full.”

John didn’t know if he meant horses or wishes, but a cavalry of beggars was riding around inside his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I beg your patience and forgiveness. I have no intention of abandoning this, it's just taking a backseat to Career Stuff and Travelling for Research and this thing called Real Life. 
> 
> In the meanwhile, you could listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFPZCxMy6hatpkYzamit_Wvw-8aZCdRWH


	16. Chapter 16

You guys.  
  
I've been writing this evening and it looks like this might be the final chapter. Therefore, it will probably be a little longer in length than the previous chapters and thus there will be a longer wait. I never imagined that this story would take me in excess of 16 months to finish. I do have other stories in the pipeline, but I'm unsure whether there will be a fourth installment of "Close the Door Lightly." If so, it will probably deal with the (sob!) assassination of John and I don't know if I have the stomach to go there right now.   
  
Anyway, if you have any last-minute requests or suggestions this is the time to make them. A minor spoiler: John and Paul aren't fighting anymore, but neither of them will get the happy ending that they want in this final chapter. So fair warning to some of you. 

Hope to have an update to you soon.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay readers, this is it. It only took me one year, seven months, and two weeks. Thank you so much for reading and leaving such thoughtful comments. 
> 
> I am in the midst of doing research for a new Beatles fiction, so I hope you'll stay with me even though the next story will be a bit different from this one: more het, less McLennon.

Instead of lying with Paul like he wanted to, John straightened up and switched off the turntable. The LP wasn’t half-bad, but it was loud and he’d had his fill. He reached for his pack of cigarettes on the mantel, put one between his lips, and lit it. He lit another and handed it to Paul.

“So here we are,” he said. He crossed his legs.

“Me and you,” Paul said, smiling. He folded an arm behind his head and stretched. John sneaked a look at him, filing the image away for later. It wasn’t every day you had Paul McCartney in your bed wearing naught but his birthday suit.

“You still on tour?” said John. He ran a finger down the outside of Paul’s thigh, making him shiver.

“Uh, not exactly,” said Paul, looking shifty. “We’re doing this benefit thing for Kampuchea in a few days. You heard of Kampuchea?”

“I’m a shut-in, but I read the news,” John said. In truth, he didn’t remember where in the hell it was or why it mattered.

“We’re having it at the Hammersmith,” Paul said. “Goes from Boxing Day until the 29th. It’s, ah, we do a bit of a supergroup thing for the finale. We’ve been organising it with this German fellow, Secretary-something of the UN.”

John thought it sounded like an orgy of pigshit and ego, but out of politeness didn’t say so.

“Who’s on the bill?” he said, although he didn’t care.

“Let’s see,” said Paul. “We’ve got Queen, Ian Dury’s band … The Clash—they’re one of Heather’s favourites—and The Who’s agreed to it as well.”

They fell quiet, the what-has-John-done-in-the-past-five-years elephant having squeezed its way into the room during the course of the conversation.

“I’d have asked you, but I figured …” Paul left the statement unfinished.

“You figured right, I wouldn’t have done it,” John said. “You know what would happen if they got us on stage together. ‘When are The Beatles getting back together?’ and all that stupid crap.” He studied a spot on the wall to avoid Paul’s eyes. “What would I play, anyway?”

Paul didn’t reply. “We’ll have three weeks off after that’s done with and then we’re doing a tour of Japan,” he said eventually.

“Kiss the in-laws for me,” said John.

“I don’t want to do it, but I dunno what else to do,” Paul said. He looked at John.

“What do you mean?” said John, meeting his eyes.

Paul took a slow drag on his cigarette. “The Japan tour, I don’t fancy doing it.”

“Yeah? So don’t do it,” John said. The solution to Paul’s dilemma was so simple Sean could have puzzled it out. “I gave it up and …” He stopped short of saying, _And I’m fine_.

“What do I do without it?” Paul said. He pulled one of Yoko's expensive cut-crystal ashtrays off the mantel and ground out his cigarette. “I’m not an artist, I’m not a businessman, I’m a music guy, John. It’s what I do.”

“I didn’t say ‘quit forever,’” John said. He was beginning to see that Paul’s superstition was dead serious: let the momentum lapse for one second and you forfeited your muse forever.

“I enjoy it,” Paul insisted.

“You sound like you’d rather be doing skits with those Osmond prats on the television than do a tour,” said John. He finished his cigarette.

“It’s the band that’s a drag,” said Paul. He glanced away. “Actually I’m splitting it up.” His tone was so casual that the significance of his words took an extra moment to sink in. Once they did, he could have knocked John down with a feather.

“What?” John stammered out.

“It’s a mess and a hassle,” Paul said. “I’d be better off, just me and Linda.”

John didn’t understand. This wasn’t some crummy side project, this was Wings, the band Paul had lofted to stardom with all his time, energy, and money.

“LJ and Steve are great guys, but I just dunno,” Paul said. He didn’t seem to be aware that he’d stunned John speechless. “It lost some of its fun after Jimmy left.” He passed a finger across his lower lip, thoughtful. “I’m not saying that Jimmy was the one holding it together; he wasn’t. He was a fucking pain in the arse. There was one night before he quit that I came so close to throttling him. He’d smashed some of Linda’s eggs and made her cry, so I just got him up against the wall and, just, my hands went around his throat before I could stop myself. And now he’s just died and it feels a bit low, don’t talk ill of the dead, but boy could he be a fucking pain. So that’s where … I’ve lost you, haven’t I?” Paul stopped, coming back down to the present.

“Yeah,” said John.

“I’ve said to you, it’s not all roses,” Paul said. “You don’t listen.”

John stroked the side of Paul’s thigh again. He’d still trade his woes for Paul’s. He couldn’t conquer his temper enough not to hit a helpless four-year-old and Paul was tired of his world-famous band that was bringing him loads of cash and celebrity. One was a definite problem and the other wasn’t.

“I do have some idea of what I want,” Paul said. His look was meaningful.

John’s mind jumped back to Paul spooning him, saying in the softest of tones, _All I’ve wanted since the band broke up was to get back together_.

There was no delicate way to communicate that to Paul that no amount of love or money could induce him to stand on a stage in a bastard version of the Beatles.

“I know,” said John.

“So what do you think?” Paul said. “Give it another go?”

“Paul, love,” said John. His hand on Paul’s thigh stilled. They looked at each other.

“Why not?” said Paul.

John had plentiful excuses. _I only write with Yoko_ was the one that came to mind, but that was a bit of a stretch since for the past four years he hadn’t even been able to write by himself. He pictured the empty days spent smoking himself into paralysis and sifting through TV channels, shooing Sean away if he lingered for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. Nowadays, the need for safety overrode any of his fleeting musical inclinations. Yoko managed the books and kept him financially solvent, Yoko met with the suits (some of them acting on Paul's behalf), and everything in Lucky Lennon’s world was easy as slicing a cake with a butcher’s knife.

“It’s never been the same with anyone else,” Paul said. “I’m always going around feeling like a tune looking for words.”

“I said to you last night, I’m not saying never,” said John.

“But?” said Paul. He sounded desperate.

“But I’ve got to get my own house in order first, is what. See if I can still do it on me own. I don’t want help.”

The sadness on Paul’s face could have broken anyone else’s resolve.

“I’m sorry about your band,” John said, “but I’m not ready to get back in the game. I’m happy where I’m at.”

They both knew that last part was the fattest of lies, but John thought if he said it out loud, maybe one of them would half-believe it.

“I’m permitted to miss it, aren’t I?” said Paul. "Don’t you sometimes?" He sounded hopeful.

“Sometimes,” John agreed, cautious. In fact, he’d never examined the question very closely. Hard to bring Paul into the equation while keeping John in the equation remained a challenge. “Mostly no.”

He did miss how simple it had been to write a song back when he and Paul were still close; lock them in a room for half an hour and they’d emerge with a guaranteed chart-topper. He didn’t pine for Paul's workaholism, his bossiness, or his ego. “I don’t think about it, if you want the truth,” said. “I’ve got quite enough on me plate.”

“We’re mates again though, aren’t we?” said Paul.

“Yeah, of course we are,” John said. The hollowness of the words made him want to sweat. He had to find some way to get them out of the room and fast. “Let’s drop it, though, alright? We’ve just had a nice shag and watched a nice film and we can have another nice shag in the morning if we don’t get into another barney. Fancy decorating that shite tree of yours?”

“Watch it, that shite tree has a thin skin,” said Paul. He sat up and squinted at the foot of the bed. “What happened to my clothes?”

“Just put on a dressing gown,” John said. He inched to the edge of the bed and put his feet on the floor. “I’ve got enough for an army in the wardrobe.”

He walked to the wardrobe and opened it. Paul joined him, scratching the back of his head.

“Here, try this one on,” said John, handing him a cotton Lloyd Attree and Smith dressing gown in a forest-green paisley.

Paul shrugged it on, his nakedness disappearing from view much to John’s regret. He tied it about his waist. It was a perfect fit. “How’s it look?”

“Like the tailor took it in just for you,” John said, grousing about it a little. Paul had the same effect on clothes that he had on women; they favoured him without him having to do a single thing to earn it.  

John took a red tartan gown off the hook and slid it over his shoulders. “How’s it look?”

Paul’s eyes travelled to his John’s lower half, not yet covered by the gown. “Looks like it’s finally quieted down for the night,” he said.

“Give me a kiss and we can put your theory to the test,” John said, closing the space between them. Paul’s mouth met his, unresisting. John skimmed his jawline with a finger, brushing stubble.

“Haven’t you had enough?” said Paul. He smiled under John’s lips.

“What do you think?” John said, looking down at himself. Paul’s eyes followed his.

“I think it thinks you’re still a teenager,” Paul said, meeting John’s eyes and laughing. He lowered his hands and John’s heart missed a beat, but he was only tucking the edges of John’s gown together just so and doing up the tie. “I’m not a teenager. I’ve got jetlag and a hangover.” He pulled the ends of the tie, tightening it.

“Sure I can’t persuade you?” said John. He kissed Paul again, pressing his tongue to Paul’s.

“Mmm,” Paul said, closing his eyes. “The heart is willing, but the flesh, as they say …”

“What do they say about the flesh?” John said. He moved his activities to Paul’s earlobe.

Paul stiffened at the caress. “It’s no good,” he said, “the flesh is on its last legs for the night. But that _is_ nice. File it away for later, please.” He took John by the crook of the arm and tugged. “C’mon, let’s hang out a bit before I pack it in.” He yawned as if to emphasise his point.

“You’re not a bit of fun,” John said. He felt dizzy with want again.

“Fix me a Scotch and Coke,” said Paul. “Old time’s sake.”

John opened the bedroom door. Micha was lying outside it, flicking her tail. When she saw him, she sprang to her feet and dashed in the direction of the kitchen.

In the kitchen, he had to ration out the last of the calf’s liver so the cats would quiet down before he could turn his attention to the contents of the kitchen cupboards. Yoko had stowed most of the expensive liquor, rat-like, in one of the other apartments.

“No Scotch,” said John, scanning the bottles in front of him. “I’ve got gin. Sake.”

“And no soda,” Paul said, leaning back against the worktop with his hands turned backward, gripping the edge.

“Soda’s not in the diet,” John said. “It’ll be a lime and gin, or nothing.”

“What if I like sake?” Paul said.

“You don’t,” John said. He pulled a lowball glass from a different cupboard and poured a generous measure of gin. Paul tasted it.

“Godawful,” he said, grimacing. “I need a chaser.” He leaned forward and gave John a lingering kiss.

Bloody hell, he was a barefaced flirt. “You’d better stop that,” John said. “I don’t want to be responsible for what I do next.”

With effort, he peeled himself away from Paul and stepped over to the refrigerator to snag an ice tray and two limes. Paul took another sip of gin as John returned and dropped ice cubes into his own empty glass. Paul held his out and John splashed some ice into the gin.

“Cheers,” Paul said, chinking his glass again John’s.

John quartered the limes on the bare worktop and squeezed a couple wedges into his glass. “Help yourself,” he said to Paul, indicating the limes.

When his own drink was ready, he took it to the sitting room. Paul followed him, looking cheerful. John wondered what was going on in his head and what they had just toasted to in the kitchen. He walked over to the telly to turn it on, but behind him on the sofa Paul said, “Let’s leave it off for now. Can we try the radio?”

John cocked an eyebrow. “Whose house is this, anyway?”

“It’ll just be some crap, anyway,” said Paul. “More Osmonds.” He set his glass on the coffee table and walked over to the radio, switching it on. He fiddled with the dial for a few moments. “Ah, here we go.”

John listened. It was the Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby doing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Paul did a little dance step and John fought back a smile. It reminded him of being back at Mendips in December, twilight falling with a cold hard rain driving against the windows, Mimi in the kitchen cooking supper and Uncle George in his armchair rereading the morning paper, smoking a pipe, and listening to the wireless. The memory was equal parts beautiful and sad.

Paul knelt on the carpet and guided the dangling end of the Christmas tree lights to the plug. The withered tree lit up, a merry spectacle of red, blue, and green.

“Much better,” Paul said.

“I’m switching it off if I hear ‘Having a Wonderful Christmastime,’” said John. He sat down on the sofa.

Paul shot him a dirty look. “The tree?” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment, you prick.”  He disappeared from the room.

When he returned, he had the parcels he’d been carrying on Wednesday in his arms. He set all but one underneath the tree.

“For Sean,” he explained. “There’s one for Yoko, dunno what it is. Lin picked it out and had it wrapped there.” He seated himself next to John and handed him a rectangular present in green and gold giftwrap.

“What’s this?” John said. He tried not to give away that he was pleased, but Paul picked up on it, anyway.

“A prezzie, you git,” he said, nudging John in the thigh with his knee. He scooted closer so their legs were touching and leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head.

 John tore off the paper. Inside the paper was a Walkman, billed on the outside of the box as a _Walking Stereo with Hotline_. He must have looked puzzled, because Paul said, “It’s portable. You put the headphones on, put a tape in, and stick it in your pocket.”

“Thanks,” he said, turning the box over to read the back and grinning.

“You’ll have to buy your own tapes. I don’t know what you’re listening to these days. Figured you might not fancy _Back to the Egg_ ,” said Paul.

“I’ve already got the LP,” he said, laying the box on the coffee table.

“Really?” Paul said.

“Why wouldn’t I?” John said.

“Because you’re always saying you don’t follow what ol’ Paul’s up to?” Paul said, with a shake of his head.

“Read the press that closely, eh?” John said.

“Never had a reason to stop,” Paul said.

John had to smile again. Well, they were still obsessed with each other, no two ways around it. “I don’t have anything for you,” he said.

“I’ve already said,” Paul said, taking a swig of his drink, “just give me a chance again.” He moved aside and pulled his legs onto the sofa, lying back against the opposite arm on a throw pillow. “Someday, I mean.” He stretched his bare feet into John’s lap. Nat King Cole’s version of “The Christmas Song” had come on the radio.

“A lot of cheek you’ve got,” said John, addressing Paul’s feet.

In reply, Paul wiggled his toes and yawned. John yawned back, though he wasn’t especially tired. He thought of Sean cuddled up with Helen in the clean white sheets of a hotel bed, exhausted from a day of exercise and hard play on the beach, his thick black eyelashes fluttering as he dreamed and dreamed. Sean was probably missing him, Daddy’s violent outburst forgotten and forgiven as it always was and (maybe worse) compartmentalised into drawers in his mind that wouldn’t be opened until his teenager years or twenties. Yoko was probably still awake, holding court in a bed in the adjoining suite. She’d have Charlie on the other line reading a spread of cards, perhaps for the second or third time if they hadn’t been favourable the first time. Or she was busy organising papers for a facedown with Paul’s representatives, the ultimate irony considering that Paul was lying here with his feet in John’s lap, harmless as a lamb.

The New York snow, two days old, was dirty. The fireplace in the sitting room was drafty and cold. The tree had shed another ring of needles. He’d have to call one of the staff soon and have the cats brought more food. Yet he was cosy despite it all.

A snore from Paul caught his attention and he looked over. Paul’s mouth had dropped open and his arm dangled limp over the side of the couch, fingers trailing the carpet.

“Just us,” John said to Micha, who had jumped up next to him.

Christmas standards came and went, soft on the radio. A disc jockey with a thick New York twang introduced the next hour of music and spat out “Merry Christmas” in a way that could only be read as sarcastic. Ready to be off work so he could go get pissed. John decided it was time to retire to his bedroom for some telly.

“Alright,” he said. Micha opened her eyes and blinked once, then went back to sleep. He tickled Paul behind the ankles and Paul groaned out a protest, drawing his knees up to his chest, but didn’t bother opening his eyes. “Soft lad,” John said, standing up and stretching.

He fetched a blanket from the linen cupboard and brought it into the sitting room. On the radio, Bing Crosby was intoning, “ _O, holy night_.” It might not have been a holy night exactly, but Paul going down on you was a bloody spiritual experience by any measure. He shook the blanket out and draped it on Paul.

“Mmm, thanks,” Paul said, lids closed.

“You’ll be sore in the morning,” said John. He would have liked Paul in his own bed, but was too shy to ask.

“S’okay,” Paul murmured, pulling the blanket tight around his shoulders.

John ruffled Paul’s hair. “Have it your way.”

He spent the next hour smoking a joint, not watching _Dukes of Hazzard_ and _Dallas_ , and thinking of Paul. There were no new conclusions to come to. The impasse was the same. If Paul were in a magnanimous mood tomorrow morning, he might promise to visit oftener but John knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure himself what he expected from Paul. Sex? More than sex? While they were both busy raising families with an entire ocean dividing them? They weren’t a couple carefree bachelors anymore. What might have worked once was now forever out of reach. The stolen moments seemed worth it when Paul smiled at him, but whenever he saw Paul in the papers or the magazines he boiled over with bile and jealousy anew. Yoko was wrong. Paul wasn’t the answer. There weren’t any answers for Luckless Lennon. He was the hero in the Greek myth who never found what he was looking for. It was cast in the stars.

Around midnight, he unlocked the front door, padded down the hall, and let himself into the other apartment. It was cold and still. His guitars and tape recorder were where he had abandoned them days before. He slotted tapes into the recorder until he found the one he was looking for: his own thin voice singing _two branches of one tree face the setting sun when the day is done_ over piano and a beat from a drum machine.

When he took it out, he wrote “For Paul” on the blank label.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to @Savageandwise for suggesting Paul's gift to John. I couldn't think of anything that wasn't cloying and sentimental, and she said a Walkman--perfect!


End file.
